Thought That Came Unbidden

Last week I got sick…really sick. Strep throat and a double sinus infection, not to mention the raging headache from the congestion (bizarre fact: there are sinuses on top of your head; who knew!). I’m frankly surprised it didn’t happen sooner. I guess I just spent December not getting sick through sheer willpower (too much to do; too many other people to take care of to get sick).

My doctor prescribed an antibiotic (once per day) and a decongestant (twice per day) which I dutifully took for the first four days, and then I realized that the decongestant was making me dizzy and the antibiotic having killed the infections was starting to work on all the other bacteria in my system making food, shall we say, less than appealing.

So what does it say when the “normal side effects” of the medication are as unpleasant as what the meds were supposed to cure?

And who the hell knew there was so much food advertising on American television? Something you notice when you spend the first three hours you’re awake trying not to chunk.

But here is the real question: if it is possible for antibiotic resistant bacteria to develop outside the body (why they tell us we should take our full course of meds as prescribed), why don’t the “good bacteria” in your body develop the same resistance?

Things to think about while the world spins.

I am unreasonably fascinated by James Frey and what he means in the age of information.

In case you’ve been under a rock for the past month or so, Frey’s Million Little Pieces, which I had never heard of before the scandal about his book broke, sold as a memoir and picked by Oprah as part of her market changing book club was revealed by The Smoking Gun to be, in larger part, fabricated. Not a memoir in truth but, instead, a version of Frey’s life dressed up with some strategically fictionalized events.

Frey has gotten a lot of ink since The Smoking Gun’s exposé, The New York Times search page lists 97 articles in the past 90 days that reference “James Frey.” Plugging his name into Google news yields an ungodly high number of results but I think that has more to do with a certain lack of specificity in how Google indexes news than it does with Frey’s actual importance.

I’ve seen articles about Frey or about Frey’s influence in Slate, Salon, The Washington Post, and Mark Morford’s column. The comics page has even gotten into the act. A lot of journalists have spent a lot of ink on excoriating Frey for his lies and the damage they may have done to the “culture of recovery” (may I gag now?). And while I didn’t see the whole interview, I suspect that’s one of the things that Oprah challenged Frey on during his command performance, his assumptions about addiction and recovery and how the lies he told affect people’s perceptions of those things.

What interests me is not those things but more the ink that has been spent on examining the nature of memoir versus fiction. The Washington Post claims that memoir has been replacing fiction for the last decade. I would argue that there never was such a thing as a true memoir.

Memory, by nature, distorts. Time, emotional distance, wishful thinking, all of these things color and shape past events to the point that unless there is an uncontrovertible visual and aural record for an event memories are whittled and polished to where we can be comfortable with them and how they fit into the story of our lives that we are telling at any given moment. Don’t think so? Then explain to me, please, why anyone ever goes to a high school reunion.

The essence of nostalgia, in fact, is the adding of sugar to the past to make it go down more smoothly. Happy Days and Grease digested the 1950s for us to turn out something palatable and happy which ignored all the pressures to conform and racial and economic tensions of the era. The Wonder Years did the same thing for the 1960s. We have yet to successfully turn the Reagan era into something that can ignore the advent of AIDS and massive economic upheaval. And I’m sort of ambivalent about living long enough to see popular culture sanitize the chaos of W’s presidency.

More than the effects of nostalgia, though, I’d argue that there is no true memoir because the story of our lives changes constantly to fit the way we see ourselves and how we want others to see us. In short, the story we tell about ourselves changes because we change and that, in turn, changes how we perceive our pasts.

Memoir takes on a whole new concept in the age of blogs. Anyone who has one of these things struggles with just how much to say, how honest to be, given that they are available to anyone with an internet connection. Indeed, the stories of people being fired over the content of their blogs are numerous (this being the exemplar), as are the cautions from career counselors on what the impact of having a blog can be on your potential for getting a new job in the day and age of Google caching.

It’s not just blogs, though, that pose problems for creating the story of our lives. I personally know someone who managed to destroy what was left of her marriage by confessing to an affair with her boss and subsequent abortion in the context of a discussion of an article about Roe v. Wade on a news magazine’s web site. Try shifting yourself image with that hanging around in the vastness of the internet.

Blogs, discussion forums, e-mail, IM logs, all of these things combine to give us the impression that we’re being watched (apparently we are), and as we all know an event that is being watched is changed by the very fact that it is being observed.

Or, to put it another way, who isn’t on her best behavior, isn’t trying to put the best version of herself forward, when she knows she’s on stage?

If identity is mutable, as Madison Avenue tries to tell us with each new look, fashion trend, or dubbing of [insert color here] is “the new black,” is it reasonable for any memoir to reflect the pure, 100% truth about someone? Granted, Frey’s lies were more than the simple distortions of memory; indeed, they were a sad little man trying to craft a self-image out of shreds of experience. But, as is often the case with things gone awry, he has provoked some very interesting questions.

I dropped my cell phone today as I was unplugging it from the charger and for some reason the display stuck on the entry for my uncle’s office. I had to take the battery out to reset it.

Maybe I should delete it, that entry, since it’s no longer valid, but I don’t think I can.

Not yet. Maybe never.

It might have been the fever talking but the State of the Union address Tuesday night seemed to me to be just a little bit the other side of the looking glass. The first 20 minutes on democracy in Iraq? I’m gonna be so pissed of Iraq is admitted to the union before DC. And they say we have no tax base.

It is said that a picture is worth 1,000 words. To test that theory I provide to you a photograph of the Tuesday, January 24 dead-tree edition of The Washington Post.

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The juxtiposition of the smug, “Who? Me?” look on Bush’s face combined with the story about Ford’s layoffs pretty much says it all for me. Oh, and let’s not talk about the $22B USD the Republicans “saved” the healthcare industry as a result of closed door negotiations. Those payments are going to come from somewhere and you can bet it’s not going to be out of the Pentagon’s budget.

One of the things I have always cherished about living in the actual city (as opposed to “the metro area”) is that DC has been, up until very recently, largely free of chain restaurants. That is to say, national chains like Chili’s, Outback Steakhouse, Applebee’s, TGI Friday’s, and the like.

The rejuvenation of downtown has changed some of that, starting with Fadó Irish Pub, which I’m reliably told by a native Dubliner “isn’t all that bad,” about 10 years ago right through the incongruity of having a Hooters, complete with sign in Chinese, in what used to be DC’s Chinatown. One thing DC does still have in abundance, though, is local chains, i.e. restaurants that started in the DC area and have the bulk of their outlets here.

DC isn’t known for its cuisine despite the numerous and over-priced restaurants that are always popular with the Washington elite, restaurant favoritism varying, of course, by administration, a tradition that goes back to at least the Kennedy era and that group’s absurd affection for a place called Lion D’Or. Grossly mediocre restaurants are consistently given four stars by both The Washington Post and Washingtonian Magazine. If you’re part of the political elite, though, Washington pays attention to where you have lunch.

One little known bit of trivia, there are two restaurants in DC in which quorum calls for votes on the House and Senate floor are routinely issued while Congress is in session. If you know your way around, though, or if you spend enough time looking and you care more about what you eat than where, eventually you get to one of DC’s hidden gems: Hard Times Cafe.

Hard Times started in Alexandria nearly 30 years ago and is unabashedly, first and foremost, a chili parlor. Yes, that’s right, spiced meat, beans, cheese, onions, and hot sauce, that kind of chili. The places are decorated with odds and ends that take you right back to the Western serial/Red Rider bb-gun days of the 1940s and 1950s, and they are unabashedly old-school country. I’m talking pre-Johnny Cash country. In a town not noted for its promotion of individuality, Hard Times is a rarity. Plus, the chili is just damn good.

Four different kinds – Texas, Cincinnati, Terlinga Red (new in the last decade), and Vegetarian – each with its own special taste and texture. The five way is chili mac with everything: spaghetti, beans, cheeses, onions, and, of course, chili. Ordering wet, which is a little off-menu secret, tells the cook not to drain the meat which gives you more spices and, in my opinion, more flavor.

They have other things, of course, like sweet, fluffy corn bread that comes in squares just big enough to be impressive, the best root beer you’ve ever tasted (made with honey not sugar, and caffiene free), burgers, the mandatory chicken sandwich, and a bunch of other stuff. But, for me, the chili is the thing.

Why the big commercial for Hard Times masquerading as a blog entry? Part of the new year’s resolution, I suppose: sharing more things that make me happy. Maybe, just maybe, if I start accentuating the positive there will be fewer down cycles, more up cycles, and more just regular, plain-ole days.