THE HOME TEAM

The home team was the Gary Railcats, of Gary, Indiana. Gary, Indiana is the birthplace of Michael Jackson and was recently the murder capital of the United States, though the population has since dropped to under 100,000, so it’s no longer eligible. Gary was at one point an important steel town, but isn’t anymore. Gary’s Wikipedia page says the History Channel films their show “Life After People” there. Gary’s “sister city” is Fuxin (China). The only other time I’d been to Gary, before this game, was on a Boy Scout trip when I was 11 or 12, when we stopped at a rest stop to eat Kentucky Fried Chicken and a bone came out of my chicken and cut my chin bad enough that we had to find the first aid kit to put a band-aid on it. There is also a minor novelist named Gary Indiana.

THE STADIUM

Tickets were buy one, get one for a dollar. The stadium was called “The Steel Yard.” The other team was the Sioux City Explorers, or, possibly, “X-Plorers.” I learned before the game that both teams are “independent” or “unaffiliated,” – not part of the single-A, double-A, triple-A farm system that feeds into the majors – meaning that these teams are part of a league that offer the lowest quality professional baseball available.

We got there 40 minutes early for some reason, during which time my friend’s friend bought a hat. It was dollar hot dog night (limit 4). I used, for the first time ever, the sentence “I’ll take four hot dogs, please.” The stadium had a full arcade room, which I’ve never seen in a baseball stadium before, and a playground where the centerfield bleachers would have been if there were centerfield bleachers.

We sat sort of behind home plate. Basically everybody at The Steel Yard sits sort of behind home plate. The Gary skyline we had a view of was full of smokestacks that occasionally shot fire. There were train tracks just beyond the stadium on which there was never not a long-ass freight train.

THE GAME

My friend and I began drinking heavily before the game started, which makes this difficult to remember. I remember the microphone didn’t work for the national anthem, but the stadium was small enough that the woman could just yell it and we could all hear it fine. I know the Railcats won on a bases-loaded single in the bottom of the 9th, which I think is called “a walkoff.” The final score was either 12-11 or 16-15. Someone hit a stand-up triple. One of the players was named Craig Maddux.

I remember the mid- and between-inning promotions were endless. I recall a raffle with a shitty prize. There were teenagers dressed up as hamburger buns trying to put ingredients between each other. There was something about throwing plastic fish into a pair of giant pants. At one point, all the children in the stadium were in the outfield. After the game, I remember standing and throwing a tennis ball towards a kiddie pool on the pitcher’s. I don’t know why.

One guy in the crowd got hit in the face by a foul ball, which prompted several team representatives to surround him and make him sign legal waivers. A foul ball also hit a beer vendor in the concourse. Foul balls generally seemed more dangerous at this game than at major league baseball games, because the stadium was so much smaller. The distances between the batter’s box and things a foul ball could hit were much shorter as a result. Also, the net that usually stops foul balls from hitting people was much smaller than other ones I’ve seen, for some reason.

A bit earlier, a player from the away team got thrown out for arguing with the umpire. After the game was over, we saw the guy outside the stadium wearing flip-flops and track pants while texting on his cell phone. I remember my friend wanted to ask him what he had said to the umpire get kicked out, but I told him not to, because it would have been too depressing.

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Michigan’s Fab Five (left to right) Jimmy King, Jalen Rose, Webber, Ray Jackson and Juwan Howard

Skoch3

He was born somewhere in Michigan.  He has a mom.  He was raised in a middle-upper class milieu and attended a private high school.  This was somewhat distressing for Chris because he wanted desperately to be “hard,” but you can’t be hard playing basketball in economically-depressed Detroit if you attend a private school.  I remember reading or hearing somewhere that Chris would often eat his lunch alone in a bathroom stall because he felt like he didn’t fit in at private school.

Chris was 6’8” when he was 16 and was widely regarded as the best high school basketball player in the country.  He was recruited by every college but decided to go to the University of Michigan with his friend Jalen Rose and other top-100 recruits Juwan Howard, Ray Jackson, and Jimmy King.  They were called the “Fab 5.”  They were notorious for wearing baggy shorts, black socks, and talking a lot.  The incumbent Michigan players sort of hated them for the same reasons everyone else hated them, but also because the Fab 5 took away their playing time.  I remember reading in a book called “The Fab 5” by Mitch Albom, in the first practice the Fab 5 attended the coaches were making teams for a scrimmage and Jalen Rose screamed “freshman against y’all” then the Fab 5 not only beat but destroyed the upperclassmen, embarrassing them thoroughly and repeatedly.  Ever since I read that I’ve wanted to scream “freshman against y’all” at some competitive juncture, but it’s never really felt right.

The Fab 5 went to two consecutive national championship games in 1991 and 1992, but lost both times.  Everyone sort of knew Chris Webber was way better than everyone else but in the ’92 championship game, in the final seconds, he called a timeout when the team didn’t have any timeouts left and this cost Michigan the game.  The incident is referred to as “the timeout” and is one of the most egregious errors in cognizance in all of sports.  Jalen Rose recently produced a documentary about the Fab 5 for ESPN and Chris Webber was the only member who refused to be interviewed, presumably due to not wanting to talk about “the timeout.”  Oh, also, it turned out Chris had “accepted money” from “a booster,” which is a violation of NCAA rules/regulations and, as a result, the University of Michigan has expunged all evidence of the Fab 5 from their records.

Chris Webber entered the NBA draft after that ’92 national championship loss and was drafted first overall by the Orlando Magic but traded immediately to the Golden State Warriors in a deal that also included Anfernee “Penny” Hardaway.  Chris Webber won rookie of the year, I think, but got traded to the Washington Bullets and then a few years later to the Sacramento Kings.  He played with the Kings longer than any other team and enjoyed relative success there.  They made it as far as the Western Conference Finals (one step away from the final finals), but never to the actual finals because they couldn’t get past the Lakers, who had Kobe and Shaq and some other guys, though it’s widely considered by me that the Kings were a far cooler team at that time.  They had several Eastern European guys that were good at shooting 3’s (Peja Stojakovic and Hedo Turkoglu).  They also had a large and benevolent Serbian named Vlade Divac who once picked up a smaller player so he could dunk, two white point guards who thought they were black (Jason Williams and Mike Bibby), and a guy named Scot Pollard who once told kids to do drugs.  During this time, Chris Webber dated Tyra Banks for two years.

During a playoff game in 2003 maybe, Chris hurt his knee and had to be carried off the court in a very small truck.  His career never really recovered.  He played for some other teams, including the Detroit Pistons and the Philadelphia 76ers, but had lost much of his quickness and athleticism.  According to sources, Chris became somewhat disenfranchised during these years and accounts of him smelling like weed during games are numerous.

I’m not sure when Chris’s playing career ended because he really just petered out, but I know they retired his jersey in Sacramento.  He also became an on-air personality for NBAtv at some point and has been very successful at it, successful enough to get “promoted” to “Inside the NBA” on TNT, which is nationally televised and also features Charles Barkley.  I think Chris even did the play-by-play for the most recent All Star game but I didn’t watch it so I’m not sure.  I also know that C. Webb (as he’s commonly known) collects artifacts pertaining to African American history.

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What are they? Are they important?

Are there different kinds of hugs?

Should I hug different people differently?

Should I put my arms over or under their arms? Or should one arm go over and one arm go under in a criss-cross pattern?

Does it depend on height?

How should I hug a girl that is taller than me?

What’s the best way to avoid accidentally punching/hitting someone when going to hug them?

Can I hug from a seated position?

Should I pat the other person’s back while hugging? Is that a weird thing to do?

Should I rub/slide my hand on the person at all?

Should I close my eyes? (No, right?)

Can I hug with just one arm?

If a girl knocks my hat off while hugging, should I get mad?

Is it weird to shake a girl’s hand?

Should I talk during the hug? Or is that a telltale sign of social anxiety/insecurity?

After the hug, what’s up with an arm or shoulder squeeze? Why do I feel like an asshole when I do either of those things?

If I have a gay male friend and I am a straight male, do I hug?

Is it weird if I only feel like hugging people I’ve known for 10+ years?

At what point in a friendship/platonic relationship should hugging begin?

If I fail to hug at the appropriate time in the relationship, will I never be able to hug that person?

What does it mean when you have an attractive female friend who hugs everyone except for you?

What does it mean when a girl tells you you are a bad hugger in 6th grade?

What does it mean when a girl tells you you are a bad hugger in college?

What does it mean when a girl says chidingly “you can give me a hug, I won’t bite” when you’re in graduate school?

Is my hugging ability in any way an indication of my ability in other forms of intimacy?

Why didn’t I hug my mom that one time she was crying in the elevator as we were leaving her dementia’d mom in a nursing home in Georgia?

What does it mean when an attractive girl who has a boyfriend hugs you in really cool and unexpected ways… almost goes out of her way to hug you? How should that be interpreted?

What if you’ve read several eHow/wikiHow articles re: “How to Hug” and you really, really can’t see yourself doing what they say?

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Dr. O’Brien – Pediatrician

I went to Dr. O’Brien from ages 0 to 21, I think. Maybe longer. I have thrown up in his office between 7 and 25 times for various reasons. Dr. O’Brien has a son who is my age who I’ll call “Seamus.” Seamus and I went to different elementary, middle, and junior high schools though we went to the same high school. I think he was on the crew team or the soccer team or both. He was considered “preppy,” I’d say, due to my mental image of him wearing khaki pants/shorts and Ralph Lauren/Lacoste/light-yellow polo shirts
invariably for four straight years. At some point junior year, our social circles “crossed paths” somewhat because someone was dating someone. I remember hanging out with Seamus in a basement one night and approaching him and saying “you’re dad is my doctor” while under the heavy influence of marijuana. I don’t remember him saying anything back to me. In fact, now that I think about it, I don’t think I’ve ever seen him open his mouth in any sort of communicative manner. Later that night his girlfriend
broke up with him or something and I have a very clear memory of him crying in the basement and then running up a flight of stairs out of the basement, crying. I remember saying aloud “is he ok?” to which someone said “oh yeah, he does this all the time.” His dad has seen my testicles ~50 times.

Dr. Ford – Orthodontist

During my senior year of high school I had a job delivering pizzas for a local pizza restaurant. One time it was dark and I had trouble finding the house I was delivering to. (I found out several months later that I needed glasses.) While trying to find the house, I developed an urge to poop that seemed to increase with something like an exponential growth rate. Before long the urge to poop was far more urgent than delivering the pizza. I began to panic. I considered pooping in a field or a bush and wiping with leaves or a stick or something, but then I thought I should just knock on a door and ask a person to use their bathroom. I did that. A small boy answered the door and I explained my situation to him and he let me use the bathroom next to the foyer. I pooped and was wiping when the boy’s mom knocked on the door and asked who I was and what I was doing. I explained my situation to her and apologized a lot and acknowledged that what I was doing was really weird. Then the boy’s dad came and said he was calling the police. I begged him not to do that. I washed my hands and opened the door. The boy’s dad was my orthodontist, Dr. Ford. I hadn’t seen him in a few years and he didn’t recognize me. I reminded him of who I was and even showed him my driver’s license to prove it. He apologized quietly and asked me how I was doing.

Dr. Bandow – Dermatologist

In the winter of 2009 I was getting weird rashes on my thighs from the long underwear I was wearing at the time. I went to the dermatologist and they performed a few cultures on the rash which came back inconclusive. During one of my visits Dr. Bandow suggested making a small incision in the rash and removing a piece of skin to test it for something. She said it would hurt and there would be a small scar. I asked if it was necessary. Dr. Bandow then said something like, “Well I wouldn’t have suggested it if I didn’t think it was necessary… what…do you think I just go around cutting people up for fun?” As she said this her voice went from calm and quiet to loud and frightening. She was visibly upset. I don’t remember what happened next but she didn’t cut me and the rash cleared up with some special soap they gave me.

I don’t remember her name – Physician’s Assistant

I went to the doctor for a physical and the physician’s assistant came into the room and did the things they do before the real doctor comes. She took out that thing they use to look into your ears and looked into my ears. She said, “Your ears are filthy” with a sort of rehearsed, melodramatic disgust. Then she did something – I couldn’t see what because it was happening behind me – and stuck a tube into my ear. Then she squirted a lot of water into my ear and a large brown thing came out. It was furry and about the same size as my name written in 26 pt., caps-lock Times New Roman:

ANDREW

I said “shit” loudly and asked what the fuck it was and if it had come out of my ear. She said it was dirt and it had come out of my ear and that it wasn’t abnormal. Then she did the same thing to the other ear.

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2006

I spent Halloween 2006 alone on a couch in my apartment. I had a chemistry lab the next morning so I did my lab report while watching Leprechaun: In the Hood and drinking a glass of whiskey and ice.

I found this picture on Facebook a few days later:

2007

I was studying abroad in Paris during this Halloween. I was unsure if people would celebrate or not, and I didn’t have any friends to ask, so I shaved off my beard but left the moustache as a kind of costume. I also wore an American flag around my shoulders, which seems really embarrassing in retrospect. When I got to school, no one was dressed up. One guy from Spain looked at me and nodded his head in a way that suggested he approved of my moustache. After my first class, I went to the liquor store and bought a bottle of whiskey and started taking shots in the bathroom between classes and sometimes during classes. By my last class, a poetry workshop, I was pretty drunk and I think people knew it.

2008

For Halloween 2008 I went to a party in Greenpoint, Brooklyn. I met some of my friends there but they left early. Another one of my friends came and left as well. I was dressed in a full-body gorilla suit that my dad bought as a joke for three hundred dollars on eBay. I got pretty drunk at the party. I remember encountering several people from one of my neuroscience classes in which I never spoke. I vaguely remember them making fun of me by asking me questions about the teacher in sarcastic tones. I also remember there was a gay guy who was grabbing me a lot while I was dancing, to the point that I had to forcibly tell him to “chill.”

When I got home, I put a small DiGiorno pizza in the oven and took a shower. I tried to time my shower with the pizza so that when I got out of the shower the pizza would be ready, but when I got out of the shower and looked at the pizza, it was charred and black. I ate it and went to sleep.

2009

I remember having really bad acne and not wanting to go out on this Halloween. I lay in my bed and read Matthew Rohrer’s A Plate of Chicken and then William Carlos Williams’s long poem “Asphodel, That Greeny Flower,” which Matthew Rohrer had recommended to me in class that week. I seem to remember that reading Matthew Rohrer’s book and William Carlos Williams’s poem took about the same amount of time. I spent the rest of the night emailing Matthew Rohrer questions I had. I took a shower as well.

On Thursday, August 26, 2010 I saw the “New York Liberty” play the “Indiana Fever” in Madison Square Garden. That’s what this is going to be about.

How I got the tickets

I got the tickets for free from someone I worked a temp job with two weeks ago. We became friends at the temp job. He repeatedly told me I was funny because I was sarcastic and often completely dispirited. He said I reminded him of the guy from “The Office.” I asked him which guy from “The Office” and he said he didn’t know. I liked him because he liked me.

At one point he asked me if I had any tattoos and I showed him a large tattoo I have of Rasheed Wallace, a basketball player. We started talking about basketball. He said he had played at Lincoln High School in Coney Island (NBA alumni include Stephon Marbury, Sebastian Telfair, and Lance Stephenson – it’s the high school in “He Got Game”) and now he is playing Division I college basketball at Jacksonville University. He said he wants to play professionally in Europe after he graduates. I told him I have a friend playing in Germany. I also told him that my dad knows a sports agent who sometimes negotiates European basketball contracts. I said I would contact both of them for him.

After I told him these things, he said he could get me professional basketball tickets whenever I wanted them. His “mentor,” he said, works for the Knicks and often has tickets to give away. I told him I was interested in free tickets. He called his mentor on speakerphone to prove he wasn’t lying. He asked the mentor for tickets. The mentor made a noise like he didn’t want to give him tickets. A week later, the temp job friend gave me three WNBA tickets outside the West 4th subway stop while eating a cheeseburger from McDonald’s.

My experience with the WNBA

I remember when the first game happened in 1997. I taped it. I remember thinking that the tape would be really valuable at some point in the future. I remember telling everyone in my family not to change the channel because that would mess up the recording. I left a note on the TV as well. I didn’t watch any of the game. I pressed record on the VCR and did something else. Maybe I saw the tip off. I have never rewatched that tape and I have no idea where it is now. In my life, I have probably watched less than 3 minutes of WNBA action prior to attending this game.

Attending the game

I met two of my friends at the southwest corner of 34th street and 7th avenue and gave them their tickets. I felt there was a 5-15% chance of the tickets being fake or counterfeit or something due to the “too-good-to-be-true” nature of the situation, the fact that my temp job friend was not attending the game himself, and the fact that I was once sold a counterfeit ticket outside a baseball game; however, I didn’t mention this to my friends and, according to the ticket scanning devices, the tickets were not counterfeit.

Inside the stadium, we walked to some escalators and were given small plastic bags with more plastic inside. I didn’t know what they were at first then one of my friends said they were “spirit sticks.” The game was a playoff game. Everyone got spirit sticks. It was the first game of a best-of-three series. On the escalator, we talked about how best-of-three series are weird.

Madison Square Garden

Both my friends commented on how “shitty” and unimpressive Madison Square Garden is on the inside. The seats are teal and magenta. Everything else is concrete. I read somewhere that the concession stands routinely perform poorly on health inspections. I didn’t get good cell phone reception there either. Our seats were in “Section 229.” This was our view:

The game

Before the game, #5 from the Liberty received the WNBA’s “Most Improved Player” award. Everyone cheered for her. They gave her a trophy. The Indiana players were introduced next. The PA announcer read their names in a bored monotone. We booed them some. Then they turned off all the lights. A video played on the scoreboard and people cheered. The PA announcer started speaking in a deep, animated voice. Loud jock-jams-type music played. We clapped our spirit sticks and shouted things. They introduced the New York players. A man in cargo shorts did backflips at center court. Then they turned on the lights and played basketball.

The Indiana team led for most of the first half, but the Liberty “rallied” to lead by one point at half time. #23 on the Liberty did a lot of scoring. #14 made some three-pointers. One of our favorite things was the head coach of the Indiana team. She was short and round and wore a black-and-white patterned suit jacket. Here is a picture of her I found on the internet.

There was a lot of “peripheral” entertainment during timeouts, between quarters, and at halftime. They repeatedly showed a little girl dancing in a hilarious manner. They showed the same fat guy a lot too. There was a DJ. They threw t-shirts into the crowd. Two little girls were made to run the length of the court in extremely baggy clothing. One of them fell. The Liberty mascot, a dog named “Flat Maddie,” danced to popular music. An inflatable version of Flat Maddie came out at halftime and moved around the court in weird ways until it began to deflate.

In the second half, the Liberty outscored the Indiana team and won by more than twenty points. #17 on the Liberty did a lot of good things in the fourth quarter. People cheered more in the second half than they did in the first half. Here’s a video of my friend and I cheering:

The crowd

I had previously been told that WNBA games are well-known for being a lesbian pick-up scene but I don’t think I saw many lesbians at the game. There were a number of grown men who seemed to be there alone. At its peak attendance, I’d estimate that the Madison Square Garden was only 60-65% full. I screamed “NICE FLOP” at one of the Indiana players and several people in my section looked at me nervously. A serious-looking woman wearing a backpack blocked my view for long stretches of the second half. She appeared to be coordinating a group outing though everyone in her group sat separately and by themselves. The people in her group seemed to include an old man with white hair who ate something out of a tinfoil wrapper and drank something out of a brown paper bag, a confused Asian man who sat in front us, and another serious-looking woman in an adjacent section. These people didn’t show up until well after halftime.

Final impressions

It was really fun. It’s weird to yell female pronouns at a sporting event.

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May, 2004

I was in a gymnasium at my high school. It was the afternoon. I was there taking the AP English exam with other people. A large grid of desks had been set up for us. In my mind, there was a ‘staggering’ number of desks, like 200-500, but it was probably only like 50-75 in reality. My friend Pat was there. He sat two seats behind me.

A teacher read the instructions and we started taking the test. It was really quiet. At one point, a girl sitting in front of me made a weird noise like a yelp or an attempted scream and lunged from her desk onto the gym floor. Then she just lay there, face down. Everyone looked at her, confused. I remember thinking that she was ‘cheating.’ A few teachers ran over to her and were touching her. Eventually, she stood up and got back in her seat. One of the teachers told us to keep taking the test. I turned my head around and looked at my friend Pat and he looked back at me with his eyes opened very wide. Some paramedics came and put the girl on a stretcher even though she seemed fine. After the test, I went to Pat’s house and played video games – Mario Kart, I think.

September, 2009

I was in a small cafeteria in downtown Brooklyn at the Brooklyn Book Festival. Tao Lin was reading on a panel called “Real Surreal.” It was my first time hearing him read. Nicholson Baker was there too, I think. I was sitting alone in a blue plastic chair. During the ‘Q and A’ section, an old woman went limp in her blue plastic chair and started shaking slightly. I remember looking at her and thinking something like “why is she doing that?” An Asian man sprinted from somewhere and gave her water while touching her head. She stopped shaking and woke up. I think she stayed for the rest of the reading before paramedics took her away.

June, 2010

I was working at Court Street Bagels in Brooklyn. There was a long line of people waiting to get bagels. I was doing something behind the counter when I heard a noise and someone said, “she fell.” A baby started crying. A man jumped over a table and grabbed a bottle of water and opened it forcefully so that most of it spilled onto the floor. I remember not being able to see the person who fell because the counter was in the way. Someone said, “call a doctor!” but no one did. Later, the other employees made fun of the guy who said “call a doctor.” One of the employees walked around clapping his hands and yelling “wuh-BAM!” to recreate the noise the person made when she fell. I was fired the next day.

July, 2010

I was at my friend’s band’s show at the Prospect Park Bandshell in Brooklyn. It was the afternoon. It was extremely hot. My friend’s parents were there and after the show, I rode the subway with them. We were on the subway and someone standing near us threw their water bottle into the air and collapsed onto the floor of the train. The person started shaking. I couldn’t tell if it was a man or a woman. The train stopped at a station and I remember looking frantically from the person shaking on the floor to somewhere outside the train. The person stopped shaking and my friend’s dad helped him/her up. The person looked embarrassed and was whispering “oh my god, oh my god” repeatedly. Someone offered the person a seat and he/she sat in the seat clutching his/her head between his/her legs. My friend’s dad asked the person if he/she had ever had a seizure before. The person said no. We rode the subway in silence and periodically my friend’s dad would turn around and ask the person if he/she was ok. He did this maybe five times. I couldn’t tell if he was joking or not. I got off the subway and went to the library.

INTRODUCTION

Inception is a movie about dreaming. Some reviews I’ve read or seen have said that the movie is “too complicated” or they (the reviewer) “didn’t understand.” This guy is my favorite:

I don’t think the movie is that complicated. People dream in the movie and sometimes they dream within dreams. There are four “levels” of dreaming in the movie. There is reality, dreamland 1, dreamland 2 within dreamland 1, dreamland 3 within dreamland 2 within dreamland 1, and dreamland 4 within dreamland 3 within dreamland 2 within dreamland 1. The end of the movie kind of makes you second guess whether the afore-enumerated hierarchy is correct or not, but I don’t want to think about that so I’m not going to.

GETTING HIGH, WATCHING INCEPTION

The day Inception came out, at 9 in the morning, I participated in a giant email thread with three of my friends about seeing the movie later that day. Two of those friends and I got tickets before it sold out, one friend didn’t. In the giant email thread, I said I really wanted to get high before the movie because I thought it was going to be a “spectacle” and being high would make it more of a spectacle.

Later that day, I bought weed from two obese Hispanic people in an apartment and, after that, I got high with one of the friends who I was going to see the movie with. The other friend didn’t want to get high.

We saw the movie at a large ‘megaplex’ in downtown Brooklyn. Both of my friends had printed out their tickets beforehand so they went ahead to the theater to get seats while I silently pressed buttons in a distracted manner on a kiosk in the lobby. I then remember riding something like 12-15 escalators to get to the theater. While on one of the escalators, two or three people with British accents said “excuse me” and “pardon me” as they moved quickly passed people on the escalator. When they were gone, a young African American woman turned to her friend and said in a mocking tone, “Pip pip cheerio!” and then, in an angry tone, “I’ve had enough of this ‘Spy Kids’ shit.” I stood behind them on the escalator feeling extremely confused for a moment before I felt myself grinning uncontrollably and laughing a little bit.

When I got to the theater, I found my friends looking around idly for seats. We sat in the second row because there were no other seats left. They talked about a funny thing that happened to them on the way to the theater which also involved a young African American woman saying something mean. Then the movie happened. There was a pretty sweet trailer for The Last Airbender, I think.

After the movie, we went to a bar and talked about the movie. The friend that got high with me and I both said we didn’t really like the movie because there seemed to be no ‘emotional motivation’ behind anything that the characters did. The motivation behind the inception was corporate sabotage, which is boring and stupid. The reason Leonardo DiCaprio’s character agreed to do the inception was to get back to his kids, who we didn’t get to see until the last five minutes of the movie and were just boring, stupid little kids. His character was also still in love with his dead wife, who was boring and stupid as well. These are things we said at the bar. I said the movie was pro-suicide and then I started laughing. I changed my mind and said I actually really liked Leonardo DiCaprio’s wife in the movie because all she wanted to do was commit suicide and she spent the entire movie trying to convince Leonardo DiCaprio to commit suicide with her. She ended up jumping out of a window while Leonardo DiCaprio watched. The friend who didn’t get high said he liked the movie.

WATCHING INCEPTION, NOT GETTING HIGH

I haven’t done this. I don’t know what this is like. From talking to people, though, it seems like people who don’t get high before seeing Inception tend to like the movie, while those who do get high seem to not like it that much. The people who don’t get high before it seem more willing to look past the weak overall plot and unsympathetic motivations to enjoy the movie on a more comprehensive, less questioning, almost visceral level. Sometimes these people will acknowledge the plot and motivation things as weaknesses of the movie, however, they will ultimately say things like “it didn’t bother me” or “I didn’t care about that.” I don’t know, seems weird. You’d think it would be the other way around. I’d go see Inception without smoking weed, but I don’t think I could live with myself being someone who has seen Inception more than once.