#5 The Tony Romo Bobble

The January 2007 Wild Card game against the Dallas Cowboys was the first Seahawks game I ever attended. I had followed the up-and-down season religiously, mostly in the back room at work, on the radio. Making the postseason was nearly a miracle (not as much so as in 2010, but that’s another story). My brother and I went to this game, not sure what was going to happen. I remember the Hawks getting a good lead in the early going, then the Cowboys coming back. I felt sick as I saw the Cowboy fan and his girlfriend making out in celebration in front of us. It looked like this was going to seriously suck. Even Terell Owens, the man who brings down every team he plays for, was doing well, and Cowboy fan was sure to mention it. Then we got the lead back. But Dallas was quick to move down the field.

Then the field goal happened. Tony Romo was holding, and Nick Folk was going to put the proverbial nail in our coffin. Snap, and Romo mishandled the ball. To his credit, he picked it up and ran for the end zone, but then Jordan Babineaux, “Big Play Babs”, caught him, and kept him from not only getting a touchdown, but a first and goal that could have been even more deadly. We were still in the lead, but we couldn’t run out the clock. So Dallas got the ball back. I should mention that there was this guy, probably in his late fifties/early sixties, who was sitting next to us.  For most of the game, he was listening to the radio cast and not saying anything. But when Romo threw that Hail Mary and we stopped it, he jumped up and down and said, “Holy Shit!” We high fived him. He high fived us. Everyone high fived everyone. And the Cowboys fan and his girlfriend looked dejected and he probably couldn’t even get it up for her for a week.

Every time the Cowboys made the playoffs for three years after that, they couldn’t win, and every time, the broadcasters showed the infamous bobble. And my brother and I were reminded of the best Seahawks game we’ve been to.

#4 The 2009 Apple Cup

November, 2009. My grandfather turned 90. We are a close family, and everyone cares deeply for my grandparents. Every day, I wonder if this is the day that one or both of them will be taken from me. I’ve feared that for a while. Unfortunately, the death of loved ones is a part of life. Happily, they are still around, and it was to celebrate that, as much as the milestone of 90 years of life, that my brother and I took our grandpa to the Apple Cup. While he roots for many Seattle franchises, Husky Football is his team. And coming off a winless season, he was happy to see us doing better. So we gave him this gift. And the Huskies gave him an even better one. A 30-0 shutout at Husky stadium. Watching our grandfather enjoy such a wonderful game, seeing Jake Locker run in a dominating touchdown. And when we had gotten that 30-0 score with time left, and a questionable penalty gave the Cougs a chance to get a score, and the crowd, wanting their shutout, rumbled the stadium and even our grandfather, who had struggled to make it up to our seats, was stomping his feet and smiling. That is the kind of memory you want when someone leaves you forever. I love my grandfather, and I love the Huskies for helping us give him something like this so late in his life.

#3  Cold Blooded!

Let’s go back to my grandfather. He is 92 years old, and has watched more sports games; Baseball, Football, Basketball, Soccer; played uncountable sports for Navy, and played there with a future 49ers coach and the man who legitimized the one-handed set-shot in the NBA. And my grandfather said this, the 2011 Pac 10 Basketball Championship, is the best game he has ever seen. Let that sink in for a moment. The skill level, competitiveness, luck, everything, managed to make this a game to rule above all. And I am close to agreeing. The Huskies and Wildcats were the two best teams west of the Rockies, and they were vying for a championship. Arizona was going to the NCAA tourney either way, but UW had to fight, and fight they did. It went to overtime, both teams scrabbling for an advantage, and at the final seconds, Isaiah Thomas, named for the basketball legend, and now a UW legend in his own right, raised the ball and let go.

And it went in.

This is why I watch sports, this kind of magic. IT collapsed on the hardwood, and I could do nothing but smile.

#2 The Run

My first memory of Marshawn Lynch is not a fond one. It was the 2008 home opener against the Buffalo Bills. Not only did they fool us with a rather obvious fake field goal, but Lynch ran over us like a steamroller. Then he faded into the background, because he was on the Bills for God’s sake, and they’re pretty awful. But that game stayed with me, because it was the beginning of the end for the Seahawks. For two years, we had to watch the Arizona Cardinals steal our thunder (they even lost the Superbowl to the Steelers, just like us!). Then came the 2010 season, and we were somehow, despite all odds, back in the playoffs. Against the defending Superbowl champs.

Don’t get me wrong, I love the New Orleans Saints. If a game they’re playing does not affect the Seahawks, I will root for them almost as passionately as any Seattle team. I was overjoyed when they won the Superbowl. But now they were playing my Seahawks. The Saints had beaten us our last two meetings, but this time it was more important than ever. At first, we went toe to toe, but New Orleans slowly broke us down. All of us at the viewing party were depressed, and getting downright snippy with each other.

Then Marshawn Lynch broke a tackle.

Then two. Then three.

He flung Tracy Porter, hero of the Superbowl, aside like a rag doll, and backflipped into the end zone. All the while, at our party, we were jumping up and down, yelling. I was screaming, “Beast Mode! BEAST MOOOODE!!!” It was wonderful, and even with the two playoff games I’ve actually been to, this is my favorite Seahawks moment. And it would be my number one sports moment ever, if it weren’t for…

#1 Champions

You can ignore women’s basketball all you want, but I’ll be the one enjoying the fact that good seats are affordable because of it. Oh, and also the Seattle Storm are the only professional team in the state of Washington to win more than one championship. I came late to basketball, and it was the Storm that brought me there. I attended a game in 2008, and was instantly hooked (and not just because Sue Bird and Lauren Jackson are raging hotties). My mother was quickly converted, and while other people have attended games with us, we’ve been the core fans in the family. Unfortunately, both ’08 and ’09 saw the Storm exiting the playoffs in the first round. In 2010, it all changed. We tied the record for most wins in a season. We went undefeated at home. We went undefeated in the playoffs. We were basically one giant steamroller, with one of the best starting fives in the history of basketball, and the best bench in the WNBA. We were unstoppable. Being part of a juggernaut like this is something special, and my memories of actually being there at game 2 of the finals, the energy, the noise, our own “Terrible Towels” (white instead of yellow). And then watching the Storm win it all in Atlanta, and being there to greet them at Sea Tac airport the next day, cries of “Big Shot Sue!” ringing in the air.

Watching your team (and they are my team, second only to the Seahawks ) win a championship is an experience unlike any other, and it is my number one moment not just as a Seattle sports fan, but as a sports fan. Here’s hoping for a repeat. Go Storm!

This was a story of three happy-go-lucky teenagers living in faux-modern times. They stumble upon the ability to time travel, which eventually takes them thirteen-hundred years in the future, where they discover a bleak wasteland caused by a Lovecraftian being that crashed on the planet in 65,000 BC. They vow to stop armageddon by destroying this creature, and the adventure that ensued became my favorite game ever. Just humming the music puts me in mind of the best times I’ve spent with a controller in my hand. Chrono’s first arrival in the Middle Ages, the battle with Magus, exploring the Ocean Palace, and more. Super Metroid is the only game that comes close to Chrono Trigger’s perfection. One might have been tempted to stop there, but the SNES wasn’t done with me yet.

Squaresoft, makers of the Final Fantasy series and Chrono Trigger, had another ace that year. While Secret of Mana’s true sequel never came to these shores, we got a game developed in the U.S. that took that game’s format and placed it in the best kind of Saturday morning cartoon. It’s funny to think I was more enthused about this game than Chrono Trigger when both games were first announced (being a Seattle resident, I could call the Nintendo powerline all the time with no fees, and get info on upcoming games, as well as constant advice on beating games. I even remember having a conversation with one “Game Counselor” on which was the darker game, Mortal Kombat or Super Metroid. I still  maintain it’s the latter.). But while Evermore turned out to be the lesser of the two, it was still a grand adventure, from prehistoric swamps, to futuristic space stations, to meeting Final Fantasy IV’s Cecil once again. Secret of Evermore kept me enthralled. I still had one game left to discover that year, besides Dungeons & Dragons.

Yoshi’s Island was a bit of a Christmas miracle, in that it was miraculously good, and I mostly played it at Christmas time. If you were to ask me what my favorite Mario game is, before saying, “probably Super Mario Bros. 3 or Super Mario World,” I would ask you if Yoshi’s Island counted. Because if it does, it is by far the best Mario game. I thought so even then.

1996 was the final year that the Super Nintendo was relevant in the U.S. Not to say it isn’t relevant today for many of us, but as far as market share, this was it. Super Mario RPG was a fine lead-in to this final year, and my friend and I enjoyed it so much, we actually left a party in progress and walked two miles back to my house, just so we could play this game past dawn. The Forest Maze, Marrymore, Star Hill and Nimbus Land are still heights of environmental design so many years later. This game was Squaresoft’s last hurrah for Nintendo for seven years, but I still had some discoveries left on this system, including two games from previous years.

In 1994, I viewed Donkey Kong Country with disdain. Not only was it supplanting the clearly superior Final Fantasy III in popularity, when I actually played it, it was merely okay. Still, I gave the sequel a chance. What I discovered was one of the finest platformers ever made.  It is frustratingly difficult, yet the gameplay is pitch perfect, regardless of my inability to master it. Couple that with far more interesting environments than its predecessor, and a fantastic soundtrack, and I didn’t mind discovering this game six months late. I was glad I discovered it at all. Although there was an even older game in store…

Illusion of Gaia was the spiritual sequel to Soul Blazer, the second part of the Heaven and Earth trilogy (part three, Terranigma, was unfortunately never released here. I have played it, though, and it was wonderful), and a wonder of atmosphere in gaming. As I said, I came to this game late. While it was released a month before Final Fantay III/VI, I didn’t play it until summer of 1996. It is a major part of that summer for me. It may even be one of the major reasons that, even if I were to become an ardent atheist, I would still gravitate towards mysticism like a moth to a flame. Something about the sheer atmosphere in Illusion of Gaia’s ruins, perhaps. Possibly this theme playing while the souls of the dear departed join together to help in the final battle. Or maybe I was always predisposed to the ethereal. Whatever. Better late than never. The SNES era was drawing to a close, but I had one more game to experience before I moved on.

Lufia II: Rise of the Sinistrals looks like it belongs in the 1992 output of the system. Storywise, however, it was ahead of its time. Its religious overtones foreshadowed the Playstation era of Japanese RPG storytelling, and the ending was shocking by any standards, assuming you hadn’t played the original game. You see, this game’s ending was the first game’s prologue. I was fortunate enough to experience the second game first, and along with Crocomire’s death in Super Metroid and the introductory cinema for Final Fantasy II/IV, its bittersweet finale forms the triumvirate of Super Nintendo moments that not only constituted my opinion of the era, but decided how I feel about gaming in general, even to this day. I would cast my Super Nintendo aside for a while, thanks to the Sony Playstation, and a game that continued my most beloved series in ways I could never have imagined.

But, eventually, I would return, again and again, to the system that made gaming not just a hobby, but a lifelong passion. Happy Birthday, Super Nintendo Entertainment System. And many more.

Gamers, like music lovers and movie buffs, love to define themselves by the output of their chosen medium that was popular while they were growing up. My history is problematic, in that I was at that influential age during the  transfer of power from the Nintendo Entertainment System (NES) to its successor, the  Super NES. I seem to have gravitated towards the latter as my defining system. The Super Nintendo was not only the system I enjoyed during my teenage years. It was the system that saved my teenage years. To be fair to my parents, it’s not their fault they felt video games were destroying me and my brother as well, and my entire generation. The media told them so, and if there is any group most subject to media fearmongering, it is parents. But the truth is, if it weren’t for the Super Nintendo Entertainment System, I don’t know what I would have done with myself.

I still remember when I first encountered the system. I had been playing Nintendo for a while, and I still consider the NES as the greatest gift I have ever received. However, when I saw Super Mario World on the commercials, I knew I had to play that thing (although a kid at summer camp telling me that the “sequel” [the game was actually the fourth in the series, but the second released here] to that beloved discovery Final Fantasy would be SNES only sealed the deal). We managed to rent a Super Nintendo at some point soon after its release, and played Super Mario World. I remember my first exposure to Super Mario Bros., and it was magical, but my first experience with Super Mario World is, I think, where I truly considered this video game thing as something that was worth staying with. After that came Pilotwings (frustrating), Populous (awesome), Sim City (even more awesome) and Drakkhen (yawn). But it wasn’t until that one game came along that I became a gamer for life.

Yeah, that may not look like much, but when spring break 1992 rolled around, and I wasn’t allowed to take my NES to my mom’s house from my dad’s, I was instead allowed to rent this. I thank my dad and stepmom every day for this, for if any video game could be said to have changed my life, this is it. Before Final Fantasy IV (II when it was first released, because the real II and III weren’t given to Americans until much later) I merely played games. Now I was a Gamer. Just watch this video and try to imagine the effect it had on an impressionable thirteen-year-old boy and his six-year-old brother, used to eight-bit graphics and beeps and boops telling the story. In fact, the idea of any kind of real “story” in a video game was an alien concept to us until Cecil and company came along. This game was truly something different. I spent seven months on Final Fantasy “II”, mainly because I didn’t own a Super Nintendo until my birthday of that year (it was all rentals). It involved lots of power leveling and naming the characters “Don’t Save Over This Game”. Eventually I beat the big bad, in what I remember as my “SNES Weekend”. You see, I beat this game Friday night, spent Saturday completing The Legend of Zelda: A Link to the Past, and watched my friend beat Super Mario World on Sunday. It was glorious. The thing is, it didn’t end there. Final Fantasy II (IV) kept me sane through some upheavals in family life. And then there were two games like Zelda, but incredibly different that helped me through later on.

The first was Soul Blazer, the first game in the “Heaven and Earth” trilogy, and a game that I would truly learn to appreciate later in life. The other has to do with that picture up there. Secret of Mana was a revelation almost as powerful as Final Fantasy II. At the time, I was living in a house I was not entirely used to calling my primary home, and playing this game and sharing it with my new friends that lived nearby (one of which is one of two of my closest friends ever) helped me adjust. It was a horribly flawed game, but fifteen-year-old me didn’t know that, and besides, the environments were amazing and  just listen to that music. Secret of Mana may very well define the period I spent living in Kent, as opposed to where I was used to living, Seattle.

But where Secret of Mana defined that time at my dad’s, Super Metroid defined the parallel time at my mom’s on alternate weekends. Exploring Zebes with my friend and my brother was a semi-monthly project, and seeing the true ending, while we knew Samus’s true gender, was still pretty cool, since none of us had beaten the original Metroid legitimately (I still wonder whether anyone has), and no one played Metroid II until the Super Gameboy was released. To put in perspective for non gamers the importance of Super Metroid for me and everyone else that has ever played it, the first two Metroid games featured really great ideas marred by horrible execution, while Super Metroid is in the top five of every greatest game list ever (and is usually number one or two). The greatness of Super Metroid held me over, along with FFII and Mana, until another game localized by Squaresoft (makers of the two aforementioned games) eclipsed them. Looking back, it probably shouldn’t have. But it did.

Breath of Fire was a decent game. Nowhere near the level of the games I mentioned before. Or even Mega Man X, a game released the same year as this game and Super Metroid (1994) that was somewhere between the two in quality. However, in that year of 94, Squaresoft was in full advertising blitz mode, and Breath of fire was something I could not ignore. I remember begging my mom for it that August, and when she got it for me, I did not regret debasing myself. It may not look like much, but it was an incredibly fun battle system, with great music and incredible atmospherics. I replayed it recently, and while it’s not as revelatory now as it was then, it was the first game I stayed up until four in the morning for. It would be far from the last.

While Breath of Fire induced begging, Final Fantasy III (née VI) induced what was near froth. I was turning 16, and I would have nothing less than the best. And while FFIV holds a closer place in my heart, FFVI is arguably one of the greatest games ever made. I remember my first encounter with the Lete River and party splitting. I remember watching the world destroyed and remade. I remember the epicness of the final battle. I remember that even when I watched the first girl I ever kissed move away, when I was moved to a home I was not ready for, and even as a teenage runaway, Final Fantasies IV and VI were the glue that held me to sanity. That is why the Super Nintendo means so much. That and more, as you’ll see in part 2. For now, here’s a fun Zelda gif I found on Cracked.com (click the picture to see).

It’s pretty ballsy to declare what will be considered the greatest songs of the century ninety years from now, but I think that, come 2101, this song will be on the list all the critics will be compiling the week before New Year’s.

To be fair, it’s got some serious competition from The White Stripes’ Seven Nation Army. If we were picking the most original song this young century has seen, that would win hands down. But we’re talking the best. And there is some stiff competition in that category. It is not my intention, however, to figure out every song of the past eleven years that I’ve considered great. What I’m talking about is a song that hits every point that a truly great work of music should.

Let’s talk about Keinan Abdi Warsame. This is a man that grew up in Mogadishu, Somalia. A place that constantly crops up on worst places you could possibly choose to live. This means he has gone through more horrible things than you and I could even begin to comprehend. His father left the family in Somalia in order to support them from America . Along with money, young Keinan’s father sent rap records. This would turn out to be a huge influence on the teenage Keinan. The boy and his family would leave in 1991, when Somalia’s brutal civil war (which would eventually turn it into the extremely rare Anarchist State) broke out. He spent the rest of his childhood in the Somali ghetto of Rexdale, in Toronto. So basically, I’m arguing that an African-Muslim-Canadian has made the best song to come out this century. You might wonder at that, if it weren’t for the fact that the song I’m naming has become hugely popular, and has sold World Cup soccer, Sprint and Coca-Cola around the world, and has been covered on Youtube here and back.

It’s worth noting that, ten years before his song hit, Kainan, now K’Naan, spoke before the UN. To put this in perspective, I am not eight months younger than he is, and at that time my first concern was finishing Final Fantasy VIII and being old enough to buy beer. Okay, he’s done some great stuff. All of this wouldn’t matter if he couldn’t write a good song. That’s the point. He’s taken his experience, and the universal longing for not killing each other, and combined it with one of the greatest hooks ever.

In 2009, K’Naan released an album featuring the worldbusting hit Wavin’ Flag.That same year, jewish reggae sensation Metisyahu released the similarly themed One Day, and while it’s a decent song, Metisyahu doesn’t quite have K’Naan’s talent for songcraft.

In fact, it’s very few people that can craft a great song and  make it about something more meaningful than “I met a girl and fell in love and then we hated each other”. Not that that that doesn’t make for some great music. As Stephen Colbert said, “All the best songs are about a girl”. Except when they’re not.

It seems that we, as a human civilization take the songwriting theme “let’s not be dicks to each other” as far more trite than “I like to hang out with this girl and have sex with her”, even though 99%of songs are about the latter. Yet it’s the former category that truly moves people. Bob Dylan made his entire early career around this, even if he eventually ended up writing his songs about girls. Girls are great. I like them. Girls write lots of songs about boys, too. I can’t speak to that side of things with any authority, but suffice it to say that we tend to write most of our shit about romantic relationships and fine, most of the best songwriters write their songs about that. It’s actually what most people prefer. Listeners dismiss the more political efforts of bands like U2 and System of a Down, and it’s easy to see why. We don’t want to be told you can change things, because we don’t think anyone can, and mockery makes the problem seem less pressing, so we can go back to worrying about what most songs are about, that being sex and superficial love (oh, and money).

But what if there was a song about violence and justice and basically not treating each other like shit that was so well written we just couldn’t ignore it? Here is where Wavin’ Flag has succeeded where even Sunday Bloody Sunday couldn’t.

When I get older

I will be stronger

They’ll call me freedom

Just like a Wavin’ Flag

And then it goes back

And then it goes back

And then it goes back

First we look at the song structure. It isn’t anything new, but every lyric, every beat is so perfectly placed, even Dylan and Cohen might express some jealousy. That’s the technical side.

As for the lyrics, they aren’t exactly optimistic. The first verse is how his life should have been great, the second about how the subjugators use terms like “love is the answer” to keep us subjugated. Not to say love isn’t the answer, it’s just that it’s an easy tool to keep people complacent. No, I’m not going to launch into a diatribe about how the man uses romantic music to keep us down. That’s crazy, and I happen to like a lot of love songs.  But we need more. In the chorus, he expresses reserve with the “and then it goes back”, but at the same time, the “going back” doesn’t just mean regression, it’s painting a picture of the flag blowing freely in the wind, and snapping back.

My favorite part is the lead in to the chorus. He speaks of redemption as fateful. It is going to happen. But not now.

But for now we say

When I get older

I will be stronger

He’s not talking about himself. He’s talking about humanity. We are still, as a race, angry adolescents. But we will get older.  We will get stronger.

And in the end, we will all be freedom. Just like a Wavin’ Flag. And then it goes back.

Human beings are a funny bunch. We have evolved to be intensely social, yet we divide our social groups so that, barring a twist of fate, these groups will never cross paths. Well, the twist of fate is here, and every friend of ours can interact with every other friend by the click of a mouse. If you don’t know what I’m talking about, then why didn’t you tell anybody about your time machine back in 2006?

So, readers, from today and five years ago, something to keep in mind is that, way back when we all used to live in little villages, we only lived in groups of around one hundred fifty people. That’s why that’s the maximum number of people we can successfully integrate into our relationship sphere (give or take). It’s true. It’s science. That doesn’t mean we can’t have connections beyond that, it just means those connections won’t be quite as meaningful. That’s fine. If you look at most people’s Facebook  friend tally, they usually only have 50 to 250 people in there, anyway.

The thing is, somewhere between the stone age, when we had Facebook friend-sized communities, and now, when we have Facebook friend communities, we started  more and more  to live in towns, and  then cities. In the village, everyone has similar beliefs, everyone has connections with everyone else. The overall range of experience for everybody is fairly limited. In cities, you have thousands of people, people who have come from different villages, with different ranges of experience. In village times, Og knew Grog, and Grog knew Ogina, and they all knew Gorg as well. They all hung out together rendering animal fat or whatever passed for a fun Friday night in 100,000 BC. But when Grog’s descendant moved to Ur, there were a lot of people he’d never met. These were people largely different from those in the “village experience”. Grog’s descendant, let’s call him Bob, may find that he likes some of these different people, but not those different people over there on the eastern side of town. Or, if not out and out disliking them, at least figuring he doesn’t have much in common with them and knows they’d bore him at parties. However, sometimes Bob’s new buddy, let’s call him Enkidu, hangs out with one of those people, let’s call that person Jeptha. And one of Jeptha’s friends likes this new epic poetry thing which, in Enkidu’s opinion, is pretentious crap.

So fine. People start developing segregated circles of friends. Bob can talk with Enkidu about their shared interests, and Bob can then go talk to that cute temple prostitute from Nineveh about the things they both like. Everybody wins and has friends, and nobody has to subject one set of friends to another set of friends, which would just embarrass everyone involved. And of course, Mom and Dad back home in Grogville don’t have to know about any of it.

It’s how we live today. You enjoy hunting with your buddy Steve, and you enjoy talking independent film with your girlfriend’s vegan brother, Joe. But you know that Steve and Joe would find each other boring, at best. The hard truth is, while the simplest human being on Earth is a massively complex person that makes Constantin Levin look like Bella from Twilight, we tend to form friendships with most others based on a small sliver of their total personality. Linda likes Jane because Jane is funny and loves Japanese horror, but Jane can keep her damn scrapbooking to herself. It’s when we connect to people in more than just the ways that first drew them to us that real, lasting relationships are formed, and we often don’t mix even our closest friends. It’s usually not malicious either, we just don’t figure there’s really any reason to. Heck, I’ve known the two people I consider my closest friends for both over a decade, and they’ve never once met each other. I’m not rushing to do so, either, because my guess is they just wouldn’t have a whole heck of a lot to talk about.

The thing is, they could talk. Right now. Right this second, with minimal effort. And therein lies the core of how the new reality of friendship is like the old, except it’s like the old distorted by a funhouse mirror.

A few weeks ago, I posted on Facebook that I felt In 3D was Weird Al’s best album, and what followed was a heated argument with my brother’s coworker on one side, and my brother and two people from a forum I rather enjoy visiting (and neither of whom I’ve met face to face) on the other. I’ve got family, coworkers, former coworkers, best friends, old friends, friends of friends, friends on the internet, and friends I haven’t seen in twenty years all able to see what the others are like and, God forbid, interact with each other. Twenty years of nigh-instinctual keeping all my different circles of friends apart, all undone through deciding to join a site to ostensibly keep up with people I care about that live out of state. It all kind of snowballed from there.

So here we are. We have every person we know that gave enough of a shit to sign up for this service on our friends list. We know every thing that they have decided is news worthy (because apparently the string of non sequiturs we throw at each other qualifies as a “News Feed”), and we ignore most of it. That’s right, we have reconsolidated our city into a village, so that we may expressly ignore most of it.

I guess what I’m mainly trying to figure out is whether Facebook is part of our jourmey, or our ultimate destination. For Mark Zuckerburg and his compatriots, it is most assuredly a destination: for cold, hard cash. But I am more concerned about us, that is me and you and everyone we know. Is letting everyone we care about see who everyone else we care about is  the point of this grandest of experiments since democracy, or is this just an experiment in narcissism, telling everyone what we had for dinner and what we picked on the bar’s jukebox.

I desperately want to land on the side of the new village, where we all become a force for reason in this increasingly unreasonable country, just as Jon Stewart attempted with his own social experiment less than a year ago.It would make the undoing of my (and everyone else’s) social segregation worth something. Only time will tell, but there are several people that can make it tell true. I think you know what I mean. I mean you.