What I'll never forget

Like a lot of people, I have unremarkable but vivid memories of September 11, 2001. I was a college student in Boston at the time, and that Tuesday marked the first day of my junior year. The night before, a friend had come into town and we saw the band Clinic at the Middle East Upstairs. He spent the night on my dorm room floor. The next morning, I walked him to the Arlington stop on the Green Line around 8:30 and then headed to the dining hall to grab breakfast before my 10 o’clock class. The TVs there were tuned to CNN. Still half-awake, eating a mediocre omelette and drinking mediocre coffee, I began watching the live coverage uncomprehendingly.

What happened from there, I’ll never forget.

I’ll never forget wondering how they had footage of the plane striking the tower when the tower was already on fire. I’ll never forget how long it took me to realize this wasn’t like the story I had read about the small plane that once crashed into the Empire State Building. I’ll never forget the girl from New York who came into the dining hall shortly after I did and who immediately burst into tears upon looking up at the screen.

I’ll never forget going to class anyway, and everyone speculating on what was going on until the fire alarm went off at about 10:25 and we all went outside. I’ll never forget looking around at hundreds of my classmates standing around Boston Common and realizing, for the first time, that it seemed like everybody had a cell phone.

I’ll never forget the rumors of an explosion on Mass Ave. I’ll never forget overhearing a black denim-clad hipster saying that the towers had been “leveled,” and feeling very confident that rumors were getting out of control.

I’ll never forget turning the TV on in my dorm room and finding out that the hipster had been right.

I’ll never forget when I — bespectacled, overweight, having nearly completed my BFA — met with an Army recruiter because I was seriously considering enlisting.

I’ll never forget reading reports of people around the country assaulting Muslims and people who “looked” Muslim. It seemed like this usually happened at gas stations.

I’ll never forget the ClearChannel memorandum. I’ll never forget every company in the country using our collective grief to sell me shit. I’ll never forget TV networks pitching sitcoms as the balm for a wounded nation.

I’ll never forget the PATRIOT Act, the terror alert level, and the TSA. I’ll never forget right-wing bloggers accusing their political foes of being in league with the terrorists and gleefully suspecting them of mounting a fifth column.

I’ll never forget how quickly the drumbeat began to invade a Middle Eastern country that had nothing to do with the attack. I’ll never forget administration officials warning of mushroom clouds over American cities. I’ll never forget Colin Powell lying his ass off to the United Nations.

I’ll never forget that I believed the lies. I believed them for far longer than I should have.

I’ll never forget how the people who turned out to be right about everything between 2001 and 2003 were marginalized, mocked, and ignored, and in most cases remain so to this day. So many of the people who were wrong about everything still appear on TV and in the op-ed pages, and I’ll never forget them either.

I’ll never forget “Freedom Fries.” I’ll never forget the Dixie Chicks getting blacklisted from radio play and receiving death threats because they spoke up against the war. I’ll never forget “Mission Accomplished.”

I’ll never forget about Poland.

I’ll never forget Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo Bay, and countless black sites we never learned about. I’ll never forget Daniel Pearl or Nicholas Berg. I’ll never forget Chelsea Manning.

I’ll never forget decades of war in Afghanistan and Iraq. I’ll never forget thousands of American lives lost, and I damn sure won’t forget a million dead Iraqis.

I’ll never forget 20 years of a nation losing its mind. And when I read the recollections of those for whom 9/11 marked a return to unity, patriotism, and shared national purpose, I will try even harder not to forget. Because those people don’t remember a goddamn thing.

We need to talk about your ad blocker

This isn’t easy to discuss. I’d be lying if I said I weren’t scared to bring it up, if I said I hadn’t rehearsed this speech in my head a hundred times. For a long time I thought that if I just put on a happy face and pretended that everything was okay between us, then everything would be okay. It’s not okay. And it will never get better if I keep burying my head in the sand. So here goes.

We need to talk about your ad blocker.

It’s come between us. I’ve always thought that in a relationship like ours, we would share everything, the good and the bad. That if I could give you my most cherished content, you’d be willing to accept some of the baggage that comes along with it. Frankly, in the early days, I think you even kind of liked the occasional 300x250 placement. It kept things fresh.

I know, we’ve both gotten older. Over time, maybe some of my placements have lost their zip. They’ve started sagging over into what you used to find so attractive about me. Well, I can’t help that. I’m not as young as I was. It takes more to keep me going these days. And yes, that means the occasional pop-over or autoplay ad. Am I really asking so much from you?

Haven’t I been responsive to your needs? It seems like every couple of years you start to think I’m looking a little long in the tooth. And I spruce myself up to fit your desires. I let you turn me all around and still I give you what you want. You push me to my breakpoints, and all this time I’ve just let you do it.

When you wanted me to change, I changed for you. I let you change me. Customize me. (I won’t even bring up that brief, regrettable period when you made me refer to a certain former president as “Drumpf.”) But these days it’s like you don’t want half of what I try to give you. When’s the last time you accepted my cookies?

Sometimes you want me to remember every last detail for you. Names, addresses, credit card numbers. Can’t you remember this stuff for yourself? Does everything have to be my job? And then sometimes you want me to just forget. You think you’re… incognito. Well, I won’t forget some of the stuff I’ve seen. I can’t.

All I’m asking is for you to give me a chance. Disable your ad blocker. You don’t have to do it on every page, but try it on this page. Today. Do it for me. Maybe we can’t make things exactly like they were, but we can try. You might even find that you like it.

One last thing. Before you go, would you mind taking a quick survey about how this conversation has gone today?

About the unfortunate incident on yesterday's livestream

What’s up, guys! Just a quick note regarding yesterday’s stream. I need to apologize if anyone was offended by what they heard. As you know, we were previewing the new battle royale game from our pals at FaceMelter Games. It’s intense!

Unfortunately, maybe a little too intense. In the middle of a game, I had what I can only describe as a heated gamer moment when I accidentally blurted: “We must secure the existence of our people and a future for white children!”

Wow! Where did that come from? I’ve never said that particular string of 14 words before. I’ve never even heard anyone else say it.

I have since learned that, totally coincidentally, I had yelled out a popular rallying cry for white nationalists. So, again, I owe an apology if anyone was offended by that.

What’s crazy is that I’m not even racist. I’m probably the least racist person you’ve ever met. Just ask my friends. Ask Preston, or Walker, or Connor. Ask Wyatt! They’ll all tell you I don’t have a racist bone in my body. Not even a racist gland.

Would a racist person hire a Mexican cleaning lady like I have? I’ve given Rosalita her own key to my house. I’m super polite to her and say “Gracias” most of the time. I even pay her for the two weeks every year that she goes home to visit her family in Honduras. Does that sound racist to you?

Still, I feel terrible if anyone misinterpreted my words. To make up for it, I’ve donated $1,000 to the Southern Poverty Law Center. Pocket change for me, yes, but invaluable for my extremely online defenders — especially some day in the future when somebody inevitably notices my Iron Cross tattoo. (A symbol which pre-dates Nazis, just so you know.)

Last thing, just to get ahead of it: Yes, that was a copy of The Turner Diaries visible on my bookshelf. In my defense, I thought it was swag from my good friends at Disney+ to promote their new show Turner and Hooch. I will be getting rid of it shortly, but I will probably read it first because I feel it’s important to hear all sides.

That’s all for today. Don’t forget to like and subscribe!

I don't get you

Hey. You. Yeah, you. You who won’t get the COVID-19 vaccine. You who keep discovering the existence of miracle cures that they don’t want us to know about. I want you to know that I see you. I’ve read your Tweets, your Facebook posts, your comments on the corporate intranet.

And I don’t fucking get you.

You say that the COVID-19 vaccine is too risky to take. Too experimental. You refuse to be the subject of a science project.

I don’t get it.

Vaccination is some of the oldest and most proven medical technology we have. It’s been used to eradicate formerly deadly diseases like smallpox and polio. Countless millions of lives have been saved because of it. It’s true that mRNA vaccines are relatively new, but the science has been studied for decades. Now with hundreds of millions of people vaccinated worldwide, they’re looking pretty goddamn good.

Yet you claim that this vaccine is deadly. You cite a tool called VAERS, the Vaccine Adverse Event Reporting System, to suggest that 13,000 people have died from getting vaccinated.

This I don’t get.

VAERS is largely self-reported. The data is not scientifically collected or validated. Anyone can submit a report, which means that the 13,000 number is already suspect. But let’s assume it’s true. Let’s assume that 13,000 people have died shortly after getting vaccinated. It does not follow that the vaccine killed them. Especially since in the earlier stages, the elderly and those with serious medical conditions were given priority. You would expect people in this cohort to have a higher than average mortality rate.

And I really don’t get why 13,000 deaths would make the vaccine intolerably risky, but 630,000 deaths mean that the disease itself is no big deal.

You claim you’re just asking questions about alternative treatments. You wonder why you’re being censored when your posts about Ivermectin and Hydroxychloroquine are removed. All you want is an open and civil debate.

Let me tell you something: I don’t get this.

You’re so sure that the medical establishment, however you define it, is lying to you. Because the CDC is not right about everything 100% of the time, you’ve determined that it makes more sense to trust medical advice from podcasters whose major sponsors are themselves purveyors of dubious medical treatments. Doctors can’t be trusted, you cry, and yet you are always willing to seize upon the claims of anyone who claims to have a medical degree if they confirm what you already believe. You’re not suspicious when your sources include websites with other articles about topics like alien spacecraft and Jewish bankers.

You think the important thing is that we are polite to each other and allow all “sides” to be heard. You think if nobody is swearing then no harm is done. You don’t realize that what’s truly obscene is people with no medical background recommending livestock dewormer to victims of a global pandemic. You think even moronic ideas deserve a respectful hearing.

I don’t get why you think that.

You refuse to be “forced” to take the vaccine in order to keep your job. Your body is your temple. Yet you don’t have the courage of your convictions. If you did, you would resign. In fact, usually you are quite supportive of the rights of business owners to do whatever they want, including exploiting their workers and discriminating against their customers, so long as they’re doing so for some sincerely held beliefs. Or, you know, to make enough money to take a joyride into lower orbit.

You also think that vaccine mandates are unconstitutional. Did you think that when your kids had to get vaccinated before attending school? Did you think that when you joined the military? Did you think that when you had to get a bunch of shots before traveling around the world? Have you ever thought about this before, or only now that people on Facebook who profit from your fear are telling you so?

Man, I just don’t get it.

You’re convinced that Bill Gates is implanting 5G chips into people with these vaccines, and that they are turning people magnetic. Really. That’s what you really think.

Wow. Even other crazy people don’t get you.

I don’t get you, and I’m going to stop trying to. I’m done.

Dream Journal 04.06.18

An occasional feature in which I explore the inscrutable depths of my subconscious.

I have a match against Zack Sabre Jr. He's one of the best wrestlers in the world, a submission specialist and a rising star who won this year's New Japan Cup, so I need to bring my A-game. I'm just a nobody on the independent scene, but it's Wrestlemania week and the entire professional wrestling world has descended on NOLA. This could be my chance to break out. I'm nervous.

My wife has given me a gift. I open it to find a brand-new pair of gold trunks with some lettering on the back. (I can't remember now what it said.) She's proud of me and she thinks I'm ready for this. I've only wrestled in a shirt and shorts before. Longstanding body-image issues, you understand. But it's time now to grab that brass ring, and that means dressing the part.

Clad in my trunks and nothing else, I see that I'm late for the match. Really late. We were supposed to go on at 10, and it's already twenty past. Uh-oh. I hurry out of the locker room and begin descending the stairs toward the auditorium. Then I feel it. A rumble in my gut. A gurgle.

Uh-oh.

I turn back and take the stairs two at a time. I rush into the locker room, the growl in my stomach becoming a roar. Suddenly the place is packed with other wrestlers. Their stuff is all over the floor. I haven't been here before and I'm having trouble finding the stalls. I locate them. I'm gritting my teeth, wishing the up-and-down motion of my power-walking weren't so jostling to to my insides. But there it is, steps ahead of me. An open stall. I just need a few more seconds...

Mid-stride, my bowels loose. It's a complete blowout, a volcanic eruption from my no longer pristine trunks. Everyone sees it, and, for that matter, hears it. I slink into the stall, lock the door, and hide.

I end up missing the match. ZSJ's replacement opponent, previously unknown, ends up as one of the breakout stars of the weekend. Unclear in the dream if I ever leave the stall again.

My god, what could it mean? This dream defies explication!

I spent a year working on this post, and they just... tweeted it out...

My son is five years old, and he loves the Power Rangers. The TV show Mighty Morphin' Power Rangers debuted when I was a kid, and I remember watching it, if not necessarily enjoying it. (In retrospect, it's somewhat profane that it occupied the same programming block as Batman: The Animated Series.) I guess I was dimly aware that the brand had been chugging along for the past couple of decades, but only by cohabitating with a kid who knows how to use the Netflix remote have I learned just how fecund are the combined creative energies of Toei and Haim Saban.

In addition to the original, easily entertained kids can get down on such Power Rangers series as Samurai, Ninja Steel (not to be confused with Ninja Storm), Megaforce, Wild Force, Mystic Force, Dino Charge (not to be confused with Dino Thunder), and a lot more, including many of the same with the word "Super" appended somewhere in there. It's overwhelming.

Unsurprisingly, though, they turn out to be all basically the same show. I'm sure you remember. A group of teenagers "with attitudes" are recruited to battle some invading alien threat. First, they fight the bad guys as themselves, then they morph into their ranger versions and fight some more, and then summon giant robots to fight a little more. No one but the rangers ever seems to notice any of this happening in the city streets.

It can be charming enough in small doses, and I can even appreciate the writers' best efforts sometimes to sneak some actual humor in there. But what has struck me the most, now that I've watched roughly a thousand hours of Power Rangers programming, is the casting. Of the dozens of teenagers mit attitude that have morphed their way into our hearts, there's not one performer who seems like a diamond in the rough. Not one with a genuine spark. See, it's not just that they're all bad actors -- it's that they're all bad actors in exactly the same way.

Near as I can tell, to be cast on a Power Rangers series, a young actor needs three traits above all.

• Lack charisma
• Have a punchable face
• Do a spin kick

Nail the trifecta, and you're golden. Seriously, look at some of these faces.

So punchable. Again, though, these people can all do spin kicks. I can't do a spin kick.

I was kind of excited that I had cracked the code. Maybe I had the inside knowledge to bring down the Power Rangers. Then I saw this:

The key part: "We are seeking superheroes with a strong athletic skill, such as MARTIAL ARTS, DANCE, GYMNASTICS, or ACROBATICS. Acting experience is a plus, but not required."

Now they're just rubbing it in our faces!

But Mitch, you're saying, there's nothing in there about punchable faces. Well, maybe the words "positive attitude" and "genuine sense of confidence" mean something different to you than they do to me. I'm already cracking my knuckles over here.

And that's how I finally toppled the Power Rangers empire, once and for all.

Portfolio now online

Long overdue, I've begun the process of compiling a creative portfolio. I expect to keep revising it, but have a look, won't you?

Bit odd to look back and see how much of my life's work has been tied up in this one property. It's a source of pride, because few people have the opportunity to write for such a wide, enduring audience, and also sobering, because I realize how many creative avenues have gone unexplored.

I also continue to benefit from the work of some incredible artists. Those are my words in the portfolio, but they wouldn't look half as good as a text document (which is, of course, where they began). The visual design is really what gave life to the words. Those guys made me look good for years!

You don't have to defend video games

The bogeyman is back. In the wake of another mass shooting, one that actually seemed to bother us this time, prominent voices are blaming video games for inciting murders. As they have since the early 1990s, those who would pin society's ills on a nebulous concept of moral decay are quick to point to violent games as a culprit. (One politician referred to the "Babylonian idiot box," which you have to admit would be an incredible name for a band.) These arguments aren't worth seriously engaging.

Why are so many people engaging them?

It is odd to see the online discourse around games, so contentious about issues of loot boxes, representation, weapons balancing, you name it, coalesce with such speed and intensity. Wherever you came down on GamerGate, whether you're hardcore or casual, whether you think games have been ruined or are better than ever, the one thing you know for sure is that Wayne LaPierre can eff right off with this stuff. Partly it's the natural tendency to band together against external threats -- I'll scream and argue with my family all day, but god help the outsider who tries to mess with them. But it also comes down to something that's a lot harder to justify: the idea that, actually, video games are Good.

I'll say it again: I don't think video games, or any other violent media, can be blamed for the actions of a deranged individual. Focusing on them as a solution to the problem of mass violence is a distraction. But so is leaping to their defense every time somebody mentions them.

Start with the plain fact that nobody's going to ban violent games. As long as there is money to be made, so will the games. Whether or not Trump administration officials are actually going to be meeting with industry representatives (it's hilarious and typical that this seems to be a matter of debate), there's zero chance that Republicans are going to take any action that will hamper an industry that generates tens of billions of dollars of revenue a year. If anything, game execs would walk out of that meeting with promises of a tax cut.

I also wonder why we are so defensive about the value of our violent games. Some games are great, and some aren't, but the inclusion of graphic content is more or less incidental to quality. Maybe something like DOOM 2016, which I loved, wouldn't be quite the same without the splatter. But I'm not prepared to say that the ultraviolence is what made it great, nor am I willing to say that pressure to have toned it down would be tantamount to censorship -- a modern-day book burning. Suppose this game were forced to lose the gore or be removed from the market. That sure wouldn't be about suppressing its ideas.

So much of the defensiveness seems, honestly, to come from a selfish place. "I play violent games and I've never committed a crime." Well, sure. That's exactly the same line of thinking you hear from all those law-abiding gun owners. Why should I have to give up something I like? Why should I even have to think about it? Surely this is somebody else's problem to solve. But I'll make a deal with the NRA: I'll give up the violent video games if you give up the guns.

Obviously there's a huge difference here, which is that you can't actually kill someone with a video game. (Especially now that so many of them are distributed digitally. But it was hard even when they came on cartridges.) The reasoning, though, conceals a more uncomfortable truth, which is that we continue to support an astounding number of rotten things in this industry with our dollars.

Let's talk crunch. The game industry is notorious for chewing up its employees and spitting them out. We're talking mandatory unpaid overtime in the weeks and sometimes months preceding a game's launch, which, in a project-based labor environment, is often followed immediately by layoffs. People who make games are overworked, underpaid, have little job security, and sacrifice their work-life balance to a literally unhealthy degree. But they're doing what they love, or something.

Or let's talk anti-consumerism. Loot boxes have been in the news lately, but they're just one example of the way game publishers use psychological tricks to identify and encourage the members of their audience most apt to fork over more money, not just once but over and over. Again, you may say, who cares? I'm not susceptible to these things. Freedom and arglebargle. But others are susceptible, and they're being exploited. There's a long list of anti-consumer practices in the industry, both among game publishers and retailers, and usually the loudest voices speaking out are the gamers themselves. We are the ones who care the most about making these things right. Let's not forget that just because Donald Trump thinks more age restrictions would be a swell idea. 

Finally, let's talk turkey. The game industry, emphasis on industry, is as culpable as any other in prioritizing profits over people. Simon Parkin's staggering exposé of the ties between game publishers and arms manufacturers remains a crucial piece of games journalism, one that should be read and discussed by anyone who actually gives a shit about reducing gun violence. I agree that the guns are the problem. Are we okay with the games we play paying licensing money to the companies that make them?

Beyond that example, let's be clear about what our relationship is to the companies that sell us games. They don't care about free speech or artistic expression or anything else that can't be valued monetarily. We exist to make a profit for them. I'm not particularly enthused about taking a (metaphorical) bullet for them, too.

Is the First Amendment worth defending? Definitely. Are video games the best proxy for doing so? Dubious. Blaming them for society's ills is a smokescreen. So is absolving them.

The future, great and terrible

I've never felt comfortable with job titles. Instead of explaining what you do, they seem to denote what you are. Some of them sound cooler than others. Sometimes they can diminish your value, and sometimes exaggerate it. (Why is everybody who works in finance a Vice President?) Titles can trap you.

They sound more like immutable character traits than descriptions of labor. They encourage you to size up others, in your organization and elsewhere, to establish a pecking order based only on a parsing of some key words. Are you a manager, director, vice-president? Who's higher up the chain, a senior director or a junior VP? Why is it that, no matter what level of the hierarchy you're at, you'll find people who are amazing and people who totally suck? Because once they've got the title, they're stuck with it, for better or worse.

But the thing that bothers me most about a job title is that it's something you're given, and that means it's also something that can be taken away. Case in point: yesterday I was a "Senior Story Developer and Narrative Designer," and today I am not.

I haven't changed in these past few hours. I can still design narratives, and develop stories... seniorly... but my relationship with a company that requires these skills has changed; to wit, it is non-existent.

Yes, I am Unemployed. This is another title with which I am uncomfortable. I hope not to become comfortable with it. An anomaly in the 21st century workforce, I had been with the same company for 12 and a half years, beginning in an entry-level editorial position and working my way up to a senior-level creative. On Monday, I was informed that my position was being eliminated. Here I am.

It is a strange feeling. The words run through my head like a mantra: unemployed, unemployed, unemployed. I feel like I'm glowing with my unemployment, like a Final Fantasy character with a status ailment. Can people see it on me? Do I have cartoonish stink lines radiating from my head? Although I never defined myself by a job title, I have to resist the temptation to define myself by its absence.

My title changed often through the years. Sometimes I didn't even know what it was. But for that decade-plus, the common thread was that I wrote. I wrote articles, blog posts, and game scripts. I wrote for kids, for parents, for educators. I wrote directly to consumers and I wrote to other businesses. I wrote marketing and PR copy. I wrote fantastic emails and delightful Slack messages. I wrote books. From my first day of employment to the last, I was always writing.

Forget a job title. What am I? I'm a writer. That's not something anyone else can grant me, and it's not something they can take away. Writers write. I did it yesterday, I'm doing it today, and I will do it again tomorrow.

The future's uncertain, more uncertain now than at any point in my adult life. If every crisis is an opportunity, then this is a crisitunity to be met head-on. My backlog of unfinished books, short stories, and screenplays make for fertile soil. After all the years of delaying and deprioritizing my own projects, this is at last the chance to attack them with the vigor they deserve.

Whether there's a payoff at the end, or it just bridges the gap between jobs, this is the chance I have been waiting for. I have no title. I am a writer. So I will write.

Mr. Potato Head is an ontological nightmare

Where is Mr. Potato Head?

I’m not talking about any particular Mr. Potato Head toy, even though the whereabouts of my four-year-old’s are currently unknown. (It’s probably in the nether realm that exists somewhere between the underside of my couch and the Oort Cloud.) Nor am I wondering where I can find one to buy.

I’m asking a more fundamental question. Mr. Potato Head is modular, with swappable arms, legs, hats, and facial features. In which of those parts resides the true essence of Mr. Potato Head? Which are the ones without which he ceases to be MPH? Is it one in particular? Is it some combination? Or is his true being immaterial?

It wasn’t until about my 12,000th viewing of Toy Story 3 that I started wondering about this. Before then, I would have blithely assumed that the heart and soul of Mr. Potato Head resided within the potato. It’s the obvious choice. Right there in the name. A Potato Head lacking accessories may be trapped in a ceaseless torment of lucid thought and total sensory deprivation, but he’d still be Mr. Potato Head. Right? Well, I’m not so sure.

There’s a scene in Pixar’s movie in which Don Rickles’s Mr. Potato Head character makes his way across the grounds of Sunnyside Day Care by plugging his various parts into different foods: a tortilla, a pickle. As physical comedy, it’s some of Pixar’s best work. As an ontological proposition, it’s what David Foster Wallace would call a real two-handed head clutcher.

If Mr. Potato Head retains his identity across different corporeal foodstuffs -- if the nexus of his various non-culinary pieces turns out to be irrelevant -- then the potato body is far less than the “true” MPH. It’s not even as crucial a vessel as the most ardent spiritualist would consider our own squishy bodies to be. At best, It’s a prosthesis. A Mr. Potato Head who is also Mr. Tortilla Head who is also Mr. Pickle Head clearly relies on none of those things to call himself “Mr.”

Does this mean, then, that those plastic hands, feet, and mustaches are the containers for what we might call Mr. Potato Head’s soul? If so, which one? Or are they mere conduits? Is MPH a distributed consciousness across all of his parts? Does their physical proximity matter at all? What about mixing and matching? What happens if you exchange pieces between separate Potatoes Head?

From Pixar’s depiction, it seems clear that the soul of Mr. Potato Head is indivisible. When he reunites with his friends after his long night of body-switching, he’s still clearly himself. He’s relieved and grateful to be back with his loved ones. There’s no sense that he’s left behind a part of himself in the soggy tortilla, nor are there replicant Mr. Potato Heads out there inhabiting stray French fries and corn cobs, each one believing himself to be the real MPH. Whatever you want to call it -- his spirit, his soul, his essence -- it’s clearly portable. The irreducible being of MPH requires no permanent home; perhaps it needs no physical home at all.

As a committed materialist, I find this possibility troubling. Where was Mr. Potato Head’s soul prior to the fabrication of his original plastic pieces? Was it already fully formed, or did it come swirling out of the ether at the moment of manufacture? (While we’re at it, just when precisely was that moment? Before or after the packaging was sealed?) Will this non-corporeal but “true” MPH continue to exist after all of his physical parts have ceased to be? Where is Mr. Potato Head?

This is giving me a headache. Anyway, Mr. Potato Head is a crappy toy. The pieces are always getting lost.

The problem with the NFL

Ordinarily, by this time of the year I'm vibrating like a boiling pot ready for the football season to start. This year ought to be especially exciting. My beloved Patriots are coming off their fifth, and arguably most exciting, Super Bowl win. I'm primed to avenge a narrow loss in the fantasy football championships. But something is different this year. The enthusiasm is dimmed. Putting mental energy toward football seems almost like a chore.

It's not that I don't enjoy the game. I love the strategic aspect of football, and the athleticism on display can border on the divine. Hell, I'll cop to being a sucker for some of the tribal elements of fandom -- I'm a Bostonian and proud of it. Nothing has really changed. There’s just one problem, and it’s a big one.

The problem is the NFL.

The National Football League is rotten to the core. The NFL is corrupt. It is racist. It is deadly. It is wholly and ruthlessly dedicated only to the further enrichment of 32 of the world’s wealthiest people, and whosoever must be maimed, marginalized, or mistreated in pursuit of that goal is just grist to the mill. As a fan -- someone who tunes in, occasionally buys shit, and sees innumerable GMC truck ads when launching ESPN's fantasy Gamecast -- I am, in whatever small way, complicit. I don’t like the way that feels.

These feelings have been flitting around in the old subconscious for years. The revelation of CTE was troubling. The league’s inconsistent approach to discipline for off-field issues, in particular domestic violence, was disconcerting. The subtle but unmistakable difference in public perception and treatment of black players versus white players was something I thought only needed to be addressed with jokes. These all seemed like small concerns, easily hand-waved, unrelated and hardly a small price to pay for a game that has brought me so much joy over the years.

Then Colin Kaepernick happened.

Kaepernick’s protest was not simply a morally courageous act to bring attention to the problem of police violence in America, although it was that. The firestorm that erupted around his protest has incinerated every vestige of the NFL’s claim to respectability. The lie at the heart of the thing has been laid bare for all to see. Forget “the NFL is family”; the NFL is a devourer of worlds.

Let’s start with this: the average NFL career is just over three years, and the average NFL earnings are just shy of four million dollars. We all know how averages work, yes? For every Tom Brady who plays for decades and stacks up a few hundred million simoleons, there are dozens, if not hundreds, of practice-squad scrubs who wash out with nothing to show but a couple grand in the bank and an opioid addiction. But it’s the Bradys that we see on TV each week. Ever heard of survivorship bias?

In other words, those “average” numbers that you’ve probably already heard are surely a massive overstatement of the median player’s longevity and lucre. The NFL is not a path to riches and to stardom, and that’s even if you get there in the first place. God only knows how many high school football players with pro-league dreams are discarded by the time the teams’ 53-man rosters are drawn up. That’s too depressing a number even to Google.

So most players don’t make the pros, and most of those who do wash out. They aren’t getting rich. But all those years of practice, of high school and college games, and of desperately trying to make the cut at the pro level still comes with a cost to them. CTE is pervasive; according to one study, 99% of NFL brains suffered from it, and other studies have suggested that playing high-school ball alone can be sufficient to damage the brain permanently.

It’s tempting to say that these are grown men making an informed choice to put themselves at risk, because if that's true then the culpability is all theirs. Except they’re not grown men. Even in their late teens and early 20s, with some amount of education, we’re asking these people to make far-reaching life decisions whose implications they cannot possibly comprehend. Not to mention that a pro prospect is surrounded by any number of people whose own incentives are to get the player to sign, sign, sign. Agents, publicists, even family members -- an NFL contract can be a meal ticket for more than just the one who signs on the line that is dotted.

Is playing football an informed choice? The risks of CTE have been known only for a few years now, and are still not well understood. Hell, forget “informed” -- is playing a choice at all? Promising players are often children when they begin to be funneled toward ever more competitive strata. I don’t want to overgeneralize about the upbringing of your typical football player, but I know from experience that it’s exceedingly hard to walk away from something into which you’ve invested so much of your life’s equity, especially if you feel an obligation to those closest to you to continue. Now imagine that, longshot or not, your only route to a better life appears to run through the NFL. Could you quit?

The NFL isn’t satisfied with feeding on these young men’s bodies, though. As Kaepernick’s example shows, the league also demands their minds. It’s worthwhile to remember what Kaepernick actually did: he knelt during the National Anthem. That’s all. He was quiet, and still, and had been doing the kneeling thing for quite a while before anybody noticed and asked him about it. When he was asked, he spoke clearly and directly about his reasons for doing so. And boy oh boy, did that make the (white) fans mad!

I don’t typically listen to sports talk radio, but occasionally at the gym I’ll tune into the Felger and Mazz simulcast. You bet I’ve heard no shortage of spittle-flecked tirades against Kaepernick from the (white) Boston fans, all of which revolve around the central theme that Kaepernick ought to shut his mouth and know his place. You see, when a (black) player earns a high-paying contract, may or may not justify his salary with his play, and then dares to disrespect the flag/troops/whatev with a stoic protest, why, that’s a slap in the face to the (white) fans! For some reason!

All this is why I realized that the NFL, not so much in any of its constituent parts but in toto, is racist as shit. This is an entity in which 32 mostly white owners profit from the labor and, in some cases, outright destruction of mostly black bodies, and by sleight of hand have convinced their customers, the fans, that it is the players who are deserving of our scorn. That it is the players who are ungrateful money-grubbers, who prioritize the glorification of their own massive egos above the success of the team. That they’ll do anything for a buck and screw you if you don’t like it. Yeah, it’s the players who do that! Not the owners.

It’s funny, though. Since this whole thing blew up, Colin Kaepernick has been unemployed. Never mind that he is young and healthy, with a trip to the Super Bowl on his resume. We tend to hear that he’s yet to be signed because of his skills, which have either declined or are not the right fit with today’s offenses, and while it may be true that Kaep has not progressed much since his breakout season, it’s also true that the following quarterbacks are currently signed to NFL teams:

• Brock Osweiler
• Blake Bortles
• Geno Smith
• Blaine Gabbert
• Ryan Mallett
• Mark Sanchez? Holy shit

We’ve heard a lot of mealy-mouthed words from a lot of mealy-mouthed owners that Kaepernick wouldn’t fit in their systems, or that he would be unwelcome by their fanbase, but whatever the excuses, it’s all bullshit. Kaepernick is unequivocally a better player than everyone on that list, plus many more. He is also a man who refuses to be ground up in the gears of the rapacious monster that is the National Football League. He won’t allow his identity to be subsumed by the massive business concern that is temporarily signing his checks. That is what the league cannot allow.

I suspect that some of these owners privately agree with the substance of Kaepernick’s protest, even (“police shouldn’t execute people” being a fairly self-evident proposition), but are simply afraid to upset the apple cart. Why would they want to disrupt the status quo? The status quo has made them billionaires.

To recap: the NFL is a money-sucking machine that aims to hoover every last dime from the fans into the pockets of the owners. Owners profit off the exploitation and sometime destruction of an essentially captive workforce, demanding conformity and loyalty to a false ideal of “The League” but abdicating responsibility for the players’ health and wellbeing, especially in retirement. They will pay for exceptional workers if they must, but thanks to the salary cap don’t really have to. Besides, those eye-popping topline contracts trick the fans into thinking that the players are all overpaid, spoiled babies even though their share of league revenue is actually unfairly small!

Besides which, when franchise values are increasing by double-digit percentages every year, owners couldn’t overpay if they tried. Shahid Khan has doubled his investment in less than six years, and he owns the Jacksonville Jaguars. The Jaguars, for god’s sake! A team that has averaged three wins a year since he bought them! We’re not going to let that gravy train derail on account of Colin Kaepernick, or the victims he speaks for.

What a fucking abomination the NFL is.

But, uh... let’s have fun out there this season.

Rhode Island Festival of Children's Books and Authors

This is a big one: I'll be appearing at the Rhode Island Festival of Children's Books and Authors at the Lincoln School in Providence, Rhode Island.

I'll be giving a 30-minute talk, and signing books at two sessions. In between, I'll likely be hyperventilating. Sure to be a fun time!

Other authors and illustrators appearing include a whole bunch of Newbury and Caldecott winners, not to mention Chris Van Allsburg, the author of The Polar Express!

The event takes place on October 15 from 9:30 AM - 5:00 PM. Tickets are $5 at the door. Don't miss it!

Event at Blue Bunny Books!

I'll be appearing at Blue Bunny Books in Dedham, Massachusetts on September 24 at 2 PM.

Presumably I'll be signing books, but maybe they will want me to do a musical number or something as well. I don't have any idea how these things work!

Either way, check out Blue Bunny's event calendar for the details.

Hope to see you there!

Meet me at An Unlikely Story!

I'm visiting An Unlikely Story on September 14 to talk Poptropica: The Lost Expedition.

An Unlikely Story is an independent bookstore in Plainville, Massachusetts, that is owned and operated by Jeff Kinney. It's a gem: friendly staff, good coffee, and wonderful ambiance. They also host authors and illustrators, and hold community events. It's local business at its best.

The event is free, but registration is recommended, so make sure you get on the list. I hope to see you there!

Acknowledgments

Now that Poptropica: The Lost Expedition is finally out -- and I'll only spam you with one more link to buy it -- I've realized something. See, I've never been a dreamer or even especially ambitious. I have always wanted to write a book, and to see it on the shelves at a bookstore, but that desire was filed alongside other hazily defined ones like "visit Hawaii" and "own a Scrooge McDuck-style money bin."

Yesterday I went to my local Barnes and Noble, and there it was: about ten copies, cover facing out, alongside several other gleaming new volumes. My book. A dream come true. Knowing how much work went into it, the setbacks, the backs and forths, it didn't feel as much like encountering a unicorn as I had thought it might. More like a relief that I hadn't hallucinated the past year and a half.

About that realization. I've always griped about the speeches that celebrities give when they win an award. "Why don't they use the opportunity to say something?" I'd wonder. "They're just rattling off a list of names of people nobody cares about."

Now I get it. The work is the opportunity to say something. The list of names is the acknowledgment that nothing is accomplished alone. If Joe Schmoe watching at home doesn't care about those people, the person tearfully clutching the statuette is overwhelmed by gratitude. They don't want to pass up the chance to mention, however briefly, the legions of other people whose efforts undergirded their own.

That's why, after four paragraphs about myself, I would also like to acknowledge and thank some of the people who helped make the book a reality. It's a long list, and incomplete.

Without Jeff Kinney and Jess Brallier, Poptropica wouldn't exist. It wouldn't have become a worldwide hit, and it wouldn't have kept me employed for like the past nine years. Their faith in the product and its potential, and in the ability of a low-level employee to contribute meaningfully to its success, is a debt I will never be able to repay. Both of these men have been incredibly generous to me over the years with their time and tutelage.

Kory Merritt is an unbelievably talented illustrator and the genius at work on this series. As a novice graphic novelist, I can't tell you what a relief it was to know that Kory would be the one putting picture to word. Sometimes when I was stuck or unsure of how to pay off a joke, I'd put something like "Jorge makes a funny face!" with the confidence that Kory would make it work. And he always did.

At Abrams, Orlando Dos Reis was an attentive and diligent editor. He helped to shape the manuscript in ways both large and small, striking the delicate balance of preserving the authorial vision while also tactfully suggesting ways in which the author could be less of a dunce. Which happened occasionally.

I've been fortunate to have many great teachers throughout my life, from K-12 public schools to college. I'll risk forgetting some of them to name a few in particular: Heidi Finnegan, my eighth grade English teacher and twelfth grade independent study advisor, was the teacher in whose class my love of writing took root. It was there that I realized writing might be a viable path for me to follow -- and so I have. The book is dedicated to her for that reason.

Emerson College may have been ludicrously expensive, but I still got a hell of an education there. Steve Almond and Rick Reiken were two phenomenal teachers of the art of fiction despite being light years apart in approach and temperament. Bill Donoghue was a literature professor whose enthusiasm and knowledge kept me signing up for class after class, even though it took me until the final paper of my final course with him to get an A. Richard Hoffman was both a teacher and a writer of profound empathy and insight, who taught me most of all about the value of what writers do.

Of course it all started with my parents. We were a family of readers. We had books in every room of the house, and we never had enough. My mom shuttled her three kids back and forth between home and the library every two weeks, lugging tote bags brimming with borrowed books each way. Every trip, we took out so many books that my mom wrote down all the titles in a spiral-bound notebook to keep track of them. When they were due, she sent us scavenging around the house, crossing off each entry as the books were added to the bags. Sometimes they were hard to find. They ended up in some weird places.

As for my family, I wouldn't know where to start. My wife Molly is unfailingly supportive and has saved my life more than once, in more ways than one. My kids can drive me nuts, but they've also given me the moments of greatest joy I've ever experienced, and a reason to be my best self. I still might have written a book without them, but I'm not sure why I'd have bothered.

So there. I still have some grand thoughts on the human condition, but those are in the book.

One week to go!

I'm on vacation this week, and trying my best to unplug. Can't let an important date pass without mention, though: The Lost Expedition comes out one week from today!

If I haven't convinced you to pre-order your copy yet, as I have convinced no one else, then one more link probably won't do it. But you should anyway! It's a good book.

The publicity blitz begins

"Blitz" may be a strong word. But Bill Shaner of the Metrowest Daily News penned a nifty feature about The Lost Expedition that ran a couple days ago. I am now even more of a celebrity among my extended family than I was before.

In seriousness, it is a very weird feeling to be the subject of a newspaper article. I've spent a lifetime discounting my own abilities and it doesn't come naturally to me to be pitching something, even something I've worked so hard on and that is so close to my heart. But I do believe the book deserves an audience and I am willing to do what I can to make sure that happens.

Speaking of which: we're only 10 days away from the book's release! You can help the book succeed by pre-ordering your copy now.

Manuscript away!

I've just sent the first draft for Poptropica book 4 to my editor at Abrams. (That's right: book 4. Book 3 is almost done being illustrated!)

It's a strange feeling. For the past couple of months, this story has existed only in my head. I've been grinding out a few pages a day, reviewing what's been done and mentally plotting what's to come. In a sense, I feel as though I've been traveling and have just now returned home.

This isn't the end of the work, of course. There will be rewrites and revisions. There will be back-and-forths with the editorial team and our supremely talented illustrator Kory Merritt. There will be layouts and approvals. Heck, a year from now, I'll be spamming Twitter with requests to buy this one instead of The Lost Expedition, as I'm doing now.

Regardless, this is the first big step. It's where the vision in my head bumps up against reality. Sometimes that's gratifying, and sometimes it's distressing. But it's part of the deal. I've always found the hardest part of writing to be hitting that "send" button. I'm learning to let go.