Vermont: Everything is Cute

Sorry if you already read this on my Tumblr. Actually, I'm not. If you're reading both this blog and my Tumblr, you're clearly obsessed with me, so you're probably fine with reading the same thing again because you just love me so much. Ok, you're kind of smothering me. Cool it, crazy.

As you may have gleaned from my picture of the Vermont winter dreamscape a few days ago, I went on a little weekend outing to the delightful Green Mountain State. When I use the word “delightful” here, I mean literally “full of delight.” It is such a magical landscape of snow and pine trees and the FRIENDLIEST FUCKING PEOPLE EVER. Seriously, everyone in that state is so nice, it’s a little startling at first. I went to visit my idiot friend, Emily, and, every time I met someone new, she prefaced the introduction with, “You’ll really like them; they’re so nice.”

On Friday, we ventured up to Burlington for Emily’s law prom. Let me just say that everything about Burlington was delightful, but the best part of the evening, by far, was watching law students “have fun.” The first word that comes to mind is “goony.” It was just like high school prom if every single person at your school was a huge nerd. Watching people who never let loose and get drunk let loose and get drunk is really just incredible. You would think that after 4 years of college people would know how to go to a party and stay in a hotel over night without causing problems, but you’d be wrong. People were running around the hotel, breaking shit, smoking pot in the hallways, getting arrested. I was actually one of the most well-behaved people there, which is hilarious in and of itself.

On Saturday, after an absolutely fantastic brunch at Magnolia (including one of the best bloody marys I’ve ever had), Emily decided to take me on a driving tour of Vermont. It was on this cruise around the state that we coined what will inevitably become the new state motto. Vermont: Everything is Cute. The towns are cute, the people are cute, the landscapes are cute, even the occasional double-wide trailer was cute, if only because of its novelty. We then went across the border to Hanover, New Hampshire, where Dartmouth is located, and discovered that New Hampshire is also cute. Also, Vermont and New Hampshire are essentially the same state. There aren’t even signs to let you know you’re crossing the border, because they are the same place. It’s great.

I Got a Tumblr!

That's pretty much it. Just wanted to let anyone who still reads this thing know that I got a Tumblr. Check it out here: http://aportablecity.tumblr.com/
As it's easier to just post little blurbs to a Tumblr, maybe I'll actually keep up with it more. Or maybe not! What a delightful intrigue! Stay tuned to find out.

I Am Terrified...

Because I think I might be a hipster. I was playing on the internet today and found this article on "Hipster Interests." As you probably know if you've been reading this blog with any sort of semi-regularity, I LOVE hipsters. And by "I LOVE hipsters," I mean that I think they're terrible and mainly enjoy mocking them. Moving on, I obviously had to read this article so that I could laugh at everything hip, and I did laugh...for about 10 seconds until I realized that I actually like almost everything on the list. I had never really thought about it that much, but I have seen all of those movies multiple times. And I own several of them on DVD. And watch them regularly. Ditto for most of the music. And I have been known to watch Shark Week, though that's usually at the behest of others, because I don't really care that much about sharks. Shit.
Although, now that I think about it, since I enjoyed most of that stuff without feeling like I was supposed to enjoy it just to sound cool in conversation, maybe I'm not trying to be a hipster, maybe hipsters are trying to be me. Yeah, I'm going to go with that. So all of you hipsters who follow my blog should also start reading P.J. O'Rourke (particularly Holidays in Hell) and listening to Childish Gambino. Get on it.

Celebrity Guest Blog

Yikes. So I haven't posted on here in over a month, and, technically, I'm still not right now. My brother, Johnston, was oddly not busy at his very important job and was randomly inspired to write this post. It's an opinion piece like those found in The Onion, from the point of view of a working class 10 year old boy. I choose to name him Craig Jenkins. Thanks for taking the reigns on this whole blog thing, bro; clearly I'm kind of slacking. Whoops.

With Christmas quickly approaching, I have had Santa on my mind almost non-stop over the past week. And I have reached a philosophical impasse. It has been known, since time immemorial, that Santa Claus is watching all of us year-round and keeping tabs on how good we are, placing us on his lists as either good or bad. Assuming we make it to the good list, and since not all children receive the same type and number of gifts, or even gifts equal in cumulative monetary value, it stands to reason that any disparity in those gifts must result from exactly how good we are, as compared to other children. For instance, if we are polite, do well in school, help others and the like, we should receive superior gifts to say, those children who barely make onto the good list. So my question is this: if Santa is really keeping track of all these children and how good they are during the year and rewards them proportionately based on how good they have been, then why do all the rich kids get better presents?

Let's take my fourth grade class as a case study. Last year, my friend Mike Donnelly received a gold star in class for good behavior every single day. He was always polite to the teacher and all of our classmates. He helps his parents around the house and is a generally all around good kid. His only shortcoming may be that he is not the most intelligent, but that is never listed as a criterion for the good list, so this matter is negligible . Now let's tally up what he got for Christmas last year: socks, blue jeans, candy in his stocking and a Nintendo DS. Not a bad Christmas, but for such a good kid I would expect something more substantial. His father is an accountant and his mother a teacher, for reference.

Now compare him to Charles "Chaz" Winthrop Archibald, III. His father is a lobbyist, his mother is a socialite, from what I can tell. Chaz received gold stars on barely 1/4 of the schools days last year. He was consistently rude to our teacher and classmates. He never shares, throws temper tantrums when he doesn't get his way, and generally regards all of us as peasants. Further, his grades are atrocious - he can barely spell anything over two syllables and can't multiply to save his life. By all measures, I'd say he deserved a lump of coal at best. But let's look at a small sampling of what he found under the tree last year: XBox 360 fully loaded with a dozen games, Cannondale bicycle, new laptop, and a trip to Europe with his family.

How do we account for the disparity in gifts? Is Chaz doing charity work outside of school that none us knows about to make up for his poor behavior in the big man's eyes? I don't think so, he's not the type to help the homeless, sickly or elderly. As he readily admits, the only reason he even speaks to his grandmother is because she pays him $100 a visit. Am I missing something, or is the only logical explanation that Santa likes wealthy kids better than the rest of us? Are they somehow inherently better than us? Does being rich make you implicitly good? Or did they get placed on some sort of special list, on top of receiving preferential treatment in literally every other facet of life? It makes no sense - Santa is supposed to be the great equalizer, not caring if we are rich or poor and loving us just the same. But in reality, it looks like he gives gifts based entirely on how much money your parents have. Is it possible that the wealthy are bribing Santa? Has he been corrupted too? I certainly hope not, but there has to be some plausible explanation behind why Chaz receives a Mercedes PowerWheels after pushing Sara off of the jungle gym and I receive Yahtzee after receiving the 4th grade science award. Perhaps, there is some direct correlation between . . . wait, what's that mom? Oh. I see. Son of a bitch. Santa's not real. Sorry to have wasted all of your time; mystery solved. I'm off to take up juvenile delinquency.

The Big 2-3

As you would know if you were all true friends and not just imaginary people that I write to on my blog, today is my 23rd birthday. Yippee? I also recently learned that not only do I share this illustrious day with Art Garfunkel and Ryan Adams, but another famous songwriter. Well, she's not so much famous for songwriting as for doing nothing, being married to a former Olympic athlete, and having several children who also now do nothing. That's right. America's sweetheart: Kris Jenner. Here's a fun video that she made for her 30th birthday, 94 years ago today. Look out for the part when O.J. Simpson cheerfully shouts, "She loves you!" Do you think he was singing this as he murdered his wife and another person? I like to think so. Also note that music is credited to Randy Newman and lyrics to Kim, Kourtney and Khloe. Yes, an award winning songwriter has been lumped in with the Kardashian sisters. I think the apocalypse is now.

Happy 124th birthday, Kris! Next year let's totes do a party together. I'm thinking Vegas. Or female fight club. Or roller skating. Whatever, we'll figure it out. Love ya, girl, LyLaS OmGgGgGgG~~~~~@ ;)
You're awful.

Also

BULLDOGS WON YESTERDAY. I'm still so excited about this, it's actually a touch pathetic, but we haven't beat those shitheads down in Florida since I was a freshman, so yesterday was a big deal. I just had to mention something about that and leave you with two photos that really capture the essence of the day.

And I know that Tebow doesn't play for them any more and that that picture was from when they were playing Alabama, but it still makes me happy. Also this:

Today I Saw a Thing

Today my very best friend since 5th grade, Michelle, and her delightful boyfriend, Sam, were visiting me in the Big City. We touristed around all day (which was pretty fun for me, because, as someone who lives here, I generally get judged for doing this kind of thing) and went to Magnolia Bakery for cupcakes. Actually, Sam got some other sort of cake because he just has to be a crazy radical and rock the boat, but that is neither here nor there. We then went and sat in a little square to enjoy our confections, and just as I was digging into my cupcake, I glanced to my left. At the end of the square, about 10 feet from us, stood one of two trash cans. Perched daintily on the rim, like a beautiful, lithe ballerina, was a very large rat. Okay. I've seen rats before. I mean, I live in New York City, and I regularly ride the subway; I see rats like every other day. But generally they are not hanging out on top of a trash can in the middle of the afternoon in a relatively clean city square. So, of course, we were kind of horrified, but then we realized it was actually pretty damn funny. We fumbled around trying to get a picture, and then the rat, let's call him Templeton, fell into the trash can. We then spent a good amount of time speculating as to what would happen to Templeton. Would he be able to scale the trash bag, even though it had little to no traction, being a trash bag? Did he have some sort of rope with which he was going to lasso a tree and climb out? Would he be able to gnaw his way through the steel drum trash can? What kind of vertical leap do rats have? We were pretty concerned. Then we got distracted by other things. Upon finishing our cupcakes and non-cup cake, Sam went to throw the remainders of his treat out, because we were all too full to finish it. We remembered Templeton and decided to give him a sugary snack to make his imprisonment less painful. Sam crept up to the trash can, just close enough to see in, and tossed in the end of his cake. That's when he discovered that it wasn't just Templeton, but his whole rat family in that trash can. It was their smelly rat home. How quaint. Michelle then went over to view the Templeton family, and as she was creeping up, as both Sam and I are assuring her that there's no way a rat can jump high enough to get her if she gets a little closer, he jumped. If NBA players had a proportional vertical leap, regulation net height would be like 40 feet. I have never seen anything leap as high as this rat and he chose when Michelle was just barely peering over the edge to show off his skillz. It was basically the best possible timing, like the universe telling me it loves me. Michelle screamed like a little tiny girl and Sam and I laughed and laughed and laughed and laughed. It actually may have been the most hilarious thing I have ever seen. And so it was that I saw Michelle almost be accosted by a rat, and now October 30th will forever be remembered as Rat Day, or El Dia de los Ratos, for our Spanish speaking brethren.