Red, White and Blue Moon

Two nights ago, I did the impossible. The unthinkable. The potentially hazardous to my health.

I infiltrated enemy ranks. That’s right: I entered…the red zone.

As the first Presidential Debate loomed on the evening timetable, I bridged the partisan divide and attended two debate-watching events: one Republican, and one Democratic.

As you might imagine, I didn’t have a thing to wear.

The Republican get-together was first. After thoroughly browsing JohnMccain.com (not the easiest site to navigate, in my opinion), I found the closest debate-watching event in a small town located 15 miles from my house, a town that, as I would discover later that evening, also happens to be the county seat for the local chapter of the KKK. After one wrong turn that landed me in the middle of a state park, I wound my way through the tortuous dark roads until I finally arrived, 45 minutes before the debate began.

The address led me to a two-story shingled home belonging to a Mr. F, located off the main street of a small town. As I lifted my fist to knock, I noticed an array of five stickers on the front door:

National Rifle Association.

North American Hunting Club.

U.S. Marine Corps.

U.S. Military: Proud to Serve.

American and Proud.

I couldn’t help but smile. It’s like this man’s door was stumping for stereotypes.

“Come in,” a faceless voice said from inside. So I did.

To my surprise, I was the only one there.

A man with a crew cut and a walking cane stood to greet me. He sized me up as I extended my hand. “I’m Bree,” I said quickly, wondering if I was crossing some invisible line. I wasn’t really a Republican. Was I supposed to fake it?

Slightly nervous, I babbled on. “I hate to stop and run, but I can’t stay very long…” I trailed off. “There’s another event I’m trying to catch tonight.”

“That’s fine,” he said, nodding agreeably. “That’s what most people have been doing—they just stop in to get their stuff and leave.” He motioned to a table in the center of the room where a veritable pile of McCain paraphernalia lay. Pages, pamphlets, brochures, bumper stickers, round stickers, notepads—and of course, massive McCain yard signs. “Here,” Mr. F said, hobbling to
the table and collecting a hefty pile. “Take some.”

I took them in my hand, feeling slightly fraud-like. “Be right back,” he said, “and don’t mind the dog.”

“Dog?” I hadn’t seen a dog.

“Name’s Cupcake,” he said over his shoulder before disappearing into the bowels of his house.

I took the opportunity to analyze his living room. There were two bowls of potato chips on two wooden tables. Two televisions were nestled into the bookshelves, both set to CNN . There were even two fish tanks, identical in size and color, facing each other from opposite walls. It was like everything in the room had its duplicate. The effect was somewhat eerie.

Cupcake materialized from the kitchen. He wandered into the living room, a Beagle mutt with sad and baleful eyes. When I reached down to pet him, he winced and moved away.

“He was abused,” said Mr. F, ambling slowly and carefully into the room. “Want to give me your email?”

We chatted for a few more minutes, Mr. F talking about some of the local Republican politicians and, when I commented on the medals in his glass case, his thirteen years of service as a Marine. He wrote out some information on a notepad.

Standing in his living room, hand poised over the chip bowl, I felt obliged to ask a question like a real Republican would do. “So. We gonna win?” I asked, my heart wiggling like Eggs Benedict.

“McCain’ll take it,” he said, without even looking up. “Some of the local guys might be closer, though.”

In that moment, it occurred to me that half a country of McCain supporters are utterly confident that McCain will win. The other half are utterly certain it will go the other way. Obviously, one of the two groups is utterly wrong.

I helped myself to some candy before I made my way out. I’m pretty sure it was left over from Halloween.

As I closed his front door behind me, I noticed seven hot dogs roasting on the grill. Had Mr. F expected more guests? Maybe he’d envisioned watching the debate with others, reminiscing over his days in the first Gulf War and discussing our country’s glorious future. I felt a twinge of sadness.

But I hurried on my way. Besides—the Democrats had free beer and chicken wings.

When I got to the inn where the Democrats were preparing to watch the debate, it was a lively crew. No liberal vegans here—on the contrary, there were several pitchers of beer and a heaping pile of spicy chicken wings. Very left wing.

“This is gonna be good,” said a man as he stumbled toward a table, extending a shaky hand to touch the chandelier overhead. “Obama’s ideas are just so…they’re so perfect!”

I settled myself into a corner and turned on my laptop, preparing to take notes.

The moment the debate began, someone hit the lights and all 21 people crammed into the room fell silent. A mystical darkness fell over us as all eyes looked up at the television screen. You could have heard a bone crunch.

But it didn’t take long for the whispers to begin. Midway through the first ten minutes, as both candidates struggled to answer Jim Lehrer’s questions on the economy, a rippling groan of dissent went through the room.

“He’s not answering the question,” said a woman beside me, shaking her head in disgust at John McCain.

“And not only that, but the Republicans are refusing to sign!” another woman said, referring to the latest failed bailout deal.

The debate continued, and every once in a while, someone would pipe up, “Are you out of your god damn mind?” when McCain said something particularly ludicrous.

I typed away furiously, trying to capture everything I could. “The war has cost us 600 billion dollars and more than 4,000 lives,” intoned Obama, “and yet Al Qaeda is stronger now than ever before.” I couldn’t help but marvel over the fact that, when I erred in my spelling of “Al Qaeda,” Microsoft Word spell check was quick to offer me the correct alternative. What a testament to how much times have changed since 2001.

Around the time the phrase “fundamental difference” had been used for about the ninth time, I noticed my laptop was running out of juice. I took a furtive glance around the dark room and located the only open outlet—directly under the television.

There was only one thing to do: I got on my hands and knees, desperately trying not to attract attention to myself, and crawled toward the outlet with computer cord in hand, ever reverent to the almighty god of electrical current.

When I got there, I noticed one of the two sockets in the outlet was occupied by a black cord. I didn’t think much of it as I thrust my laptop cord into the remaining socket.

Then suddenly, silence.

The room was strangely quiet and dark. I looked up. The television was off, completely powered down. 20 people emitted simultaneous groans and objections as my heartbeat ground to a screeching halt.

“Oh my god,” I said, “did I do that?”

And sure enough, I had. I had unplugged the first Presidential Debate. I hadn’t even unplugged it—I'd simply plugged my laptop in, and in so doing, disrupted the electrical current and turned off the Presidential Debate while 20 impassioned Democrats were watching with bated breath. And to make matters worse, it wouldn’t go back on.

The next thirty seconds were the longest thirty seconds of my life. I jimmied, I unplugged, and I replugged, all the while offering profuse apologies to the rest of the room. I blew on the socket. I shook it. I pounded it furiously with my fist. Silently, I cursed it. I also noticed the sooty burn marks around each of the sockets. Oh, god.

Somehow, it came back on. I was so very thankful, so very thankful that I crawled out of the room with my laptop in hand.

Obama and McCain talked about Iraq next, or so I heard. By that point, I was at the bar, cowering in shame over a Blue Moon and actively avoiding a roomful of perturbed Democrats. I even made a new friend, a guy who’d completed two tours in Iraq. It cost him 60 percent of his hearing in his right ear and most of the ligament in his shoulder. It cost him his faith in our President, too.

Obviously, I didn’t exactly succeed at watching the debates. And quite frankly, I’m not sure the debates succeeded, either.

I still haven't unloaded my car. For two days, I’ve been driving around with a McCain yard sign in my back seat. Right next to it, an Obama sign rests contentedly on the plush burgundy fabric.

I wonder what the neighbors think.

Work Out with your Jerk Out

Last night at the gym, I was thwarted in my attempts at calisthenics by a woman wearing bright red lipstick and too-tight shorts. She wasn’t hogging the ellipticals, didn’t chat my ear off while I was trying for a treadmill-induced trance, and chose not to scowl at my frenetic workout pace like other patrons do. Oh, no. Much worse: she commandeered the remote control.

At my small and unassuming gym, there are only two televisions, and a scant one of these faces the general direction of the cardio machines. This TV has typically achieved some sort of stasis by the time I arrive around 7 pm. But last night, one woman embarked on an epic journey to find just the right channel to float her boat. The problem for the rest of us was: she couldn’t find it.

This was no ordinary channel surf. Just when I thought she had settled comfortably into an episode of Scrubs or Hannah Montana, she began her maniacal flipping yet again. For 17 minutes—timed by my elliptical’s ever-handy dashboard—this woman continued to surf through channels like she was on the Association of Surfing Professionals World Tour.

Unfortunately for me, my only hope of sustaining an extended workout session is to bombard myself with every possible kind of mental distraction. An hour at the gym means going on sensory overload. Ideally, I have rap music blasting through my iPod speakers, a superficial magazine in front of me, and a fast-paced program on the TV set (with captions, of course). Only then can I engage in a 600-calorie burn—although it remains to be seen if obsequious Precor and its sycophantic calorie display can really be trusted.

When channels are flashing by at the speed of light, however, achieving the necessary level of distraction is utterly impossible. Luckily, after 17 minutes of a grueling, unmitigated session on my machine, the woman made her final decision. What did she choose? The SciFi Channel.


Now, it’s not that I have anything against the SciFi Channel per se. As a child, I was an unabashed Trekkie, basking in the glories of TNG and secretly crushing on Wesley Crusher. But as an adult sweating my ass off on an unforgiving elliptical, watching grown men marvel over a yeti’s foot just isn’t going to cut it.

It’s not like it’s my first frustration at the gym. Usually when I arrive, the TV is set to Fox News, and inevitably, Sarah Palin is featured prominently in at least one story every 25 minutes. Sarah Palin has an interview! Sarah Palin has a pregnant daughter! Sarah Palin has trendy glasses! Through the din of Jamie Foxx and Kanye crooning “She a golddigga,” I can sometimes hear the women on adjacent ellipticals cooing, “Isn’t she great?”

The result is that I find myself getting viscerally angry as I pump my arms and legs faster and faster and my heart rate spikes to the 194-203 range. At least one thing can be said for Sarah Palin: she’s making me lose weight.

So it was only natural that yesterday evening, I was faced with a life-altering decision. It struck me at the very core of my being, dredged up from years of pandering to two very disparate sides of myself. It could be summed up in one simple question: Sarah Palin, or yeti’s feet?

Trembling slightly, dizzied by the knowledge of what I had to do, I made my choice.

I chose neither.

Instead, I leapt from my machine and made a mad dash for the remote as soon as the offending woman released it from her clutches. I flipped to CNN. I watched a silent John McCain’s captions talk about service.

By the time I returned to my elliptical all of six seconds later, it had reset to “zero.”

Remarkable, isn’t it? How easy it is to halt progress.

Transient Travesties

Today, upon driving out of our nation’s capital, I was privy to a series of bizarre and unnatural events. These events took the form of sightings, the kind of inexplicable roadside wonders that make my many hours in the car worthwhile. It’s the cow-shaped shoe store in Texas; the “Greenway Creek RV Park” listed as Exit 32’s sole attraction in West Virginia; the collection of carved wooden beavers in Ontario. This evening, it all began at the Food Mart on Wisconsin Avenue.

Enervated after four days of minimal sleep on a series of couches (some more receptive than others), I was pondering my current emotional state at every red light when I noticed my gas light was on. So I swung into a dingy station with “Food Mart” barely perceptible on its façade. There was nothing remarkable about the building—in fact it was rather tired and worn looking—but the $3.53/gallon gas caught my eye. So I filled my tank and proceeded inside to pay.

The Food Mart was remarkably devoid of food. It was pretty much devoid of everything. It was one room, approximately ten by fifteen feet, occupied by one man behind a makeshift counter. A dilapidated cash register rested disconsolately on the side, and buckets of paint lay askew amidst piles of junk on the floor. Three of the four walls were painted, each a different color—one was tangerine, another cobalt blue, and the last was a dazzling shade of lavender. The final wall, a dingy and uninspiring white, was home to three large black doors, all knob-less, and all closed.


As the man took my money, I began to wonder if this were the site of a future game show, or possibly a brothel owned by a madam who understood the innate appeal of warm paint tones. I asked if there were a bathroom.

“Yes,” the man said, and pointed to the door on the far left. Then he nodded to the second door. “That is man’s,” he said, in well-intentioned but broken English.

I couldn’t contain my curiosity. “And that one?” I asked, pointing to the mysterious third door.

He shook his head and smiled. “That’s for other,” he said. Though I was tempted to ask if he meant other things or other sexes, I decided to let it lie. Instead, I pushed open my own designated door, expecting the worse.

The door swung open to reveal a spacious room bathed in bright white light. The tiles were spotless, a dazzling shade of ivory. A burnished bronze mirror adorned the far wall, ornately carved and larger than my entire body. The counter was spotless, with flecks of chocolate, beige, and cream blended seamlessly into the smooth marble. From the ceiling hung a two-tier chandelier, with dangling crystals of amber and amethyst and quartz. Tendrils of cast iron leaves wound their way around each of the glass candles, and a matching light cast a pale pink glow onto the adjacent wall.

Surrounded by such opulence, I felt suddenly uncomfortable. Was it okay to pee here?

I made a stalwart attempt. Though the commode, gleaming proudly in untarnished porcelain, seemed rather out of place, all was in good working order. It helped that the toilet paper holder had a bright green tag that read, “Try my silent mechanism.” I did. And I heard nothing. So I suppose it worked.

In a state of stupefied bemusement, I continued my journey home, ruminating over how the hell the clearly economically depressed Food Mart had a bathroom straight out of Fannie Mae’s corporate headquarters. I was beleaguered by questions. How did it get there? Was it some kind of fluke? Or did the owners of Food Mart decide that, if they couldn’t have real food and consistent wall colors, they should at least let their customers pee in luxury?

As dusk fell, I continued driving, immersed in deep and troubled thought. That is, until I saw a massive red billboard that jolted me out of my stupor.

BE SURE YOUR SIN

—the sign said, in bold block letters—

WILL FIND YOU OUT.

Oh, shit, I thought. They know.

Suddenly, Food Mart’s incongruous bathroom was totally inconsequential. For the next hour, all I could do was mentally catalogue my recent sins to try and figure out which sin would find me out. And how would it do so? Considering the USPS can’t even find where I live, it didn’t seem likely that my sin was going to succeed in tracking me down—unless that certain sin had GPS. Of course this necessitated an additional catalogue of all the sins that might have GPS capacity. Which sins were mobile? Which were adept with new technology? And which were more like invalids who eat pot roast and watch Matlock reruns?

My mind was still spinning in potentially techno-savvy sins when I saw yet another mind-blowing sign. By this point I was in Pennsylvania, and the billboard was advertising a new waterpark up ahead. An image of an Egyptian bedecked in thick black kohl smiled down at me, inviting me to take the next exit and head on down to “Pharoah’s Phortress.”

Like a flash, my bounty hunter sins didn’t matter anymore. My mind was immediately filled with savory images of extirpation. My mission was now simple: destroy Pharoah’s Phortress by whatever means possible. Or at very least, destroy that sign. As an English major and lover of language, I am ashamed. Ashamed of the people responsible for naming the waterpark. Ashamed of I-476 North for allowing that billboard to tarnish its innocent shoulder. Ashamed of America for producing people who turn to their kids in the backseat after mile number 890 of their cross-country road trip and say, “Hey, doesn’t Pharoah’s Phortress sound like fun?” To which their kids reply, “Yeah, Dad!”—and then go back to drawing crayon pictures of pharoah’s phortresses and king’s kastles and celtic cubmarines.

Now, lest I be misunderstood: it’s not that I don’t approve of alliteration. I can’t get enough of the stuff—hell, as Bree Barton, it’s practically my birthright. But “Pharoah’s Phortress” is a blight on the face of the earth. It is the Eleventh Plague. It makes me want to crawl holeheartedly into a whole. I wish more business owners in charge of creating clever names for their organizations would try their own silent mechanisms, instead of polluting the world with their linguistic abominations.

It also reminds me of the time in college when I titled one of my philosophy papers “Phallacious Freud.”

Dear god. My sin has found me out.