I was rescued from impending productivity by stumbling across Bill Shunn‘s blog and Five Questions Meme currently doing the rounds in the blogosphere.

Here’s the five questions meme. Here’s how it works:

1. Leave me a comment saying, “Interview me.”
2. I will respond by asking you five questions. I get to pick the questions.
3. You will update your journal with the answers to the questions.
4. You will include this explanation and an offer to interview someone else in the same post.
5. When others comment asking to be interviewed, you will ask them five questions.

So here’s what Bill asked:

1. Where do you fall in your family’s sibling order? How do you get along with your siblings?
2. Tell me about the place where you live. Why is it a good place to live?
3. For what Greek myth do you feel the greatest personal affinity?
4. Is soccer (or football, as the rest of the world knows it) really superior to our American sports? Why or why not?
5. Would you be able to live without writing?

And my answers are below:

1. Where do you fall in your family’s sibling order? How do you get along with your siblings?
I am the youngest of three boys; my brothers are identical twins and are three years older than me. I exhibit many of the traits associated with the youngest: creativity, wiseassery, rabblerousery, outdoorsiness, black sheepery, etc.

Simply put, my brothers are my best friends by a mile. It’s sort of weird being the younger brother of twins because I see them as being as close as two human beings can be, probably trumping even marriage; although I submit gradations of the heart become moot when you get to the core people in your life. I idolized them growing up, and they have as much to do with who I am as a person today as my parents do—which should scare the shit out of all four of them. I still look up to them to this day.

2. Tell me about the place where you live. Why is it a good place to live?
I live in Madison, WI and it’s a fantastic place. It’s wildly liberal and was once described by a Republican governor as “30 square miles surrounded by reality.” If reality is defined as ignorance, intolerance, and fundamentalism I guess I can’t argue.

Geographically, Madison is located between two lakes and is surrounded by rolling countryside as soon as you reach the city limits, which makes it nice for outdoors enthusiasts. It’s also the state capitol and home to my alma mater, the University of Wisconsin. Madison is small at only 200K and retains a great feeling of community. Every Saturday locals gather at the capitol for the excellent farmer’s market, and during the summer the Wisconsin Chamber Orchestra has free concerts each Wednesday night on the capitol square. People sit on the lawn, drink wine, listen, and chat. There’s also an entrenched drinking culture here, which means a diversity of bars and local breweries which I fully appreciate. Add to all of this the things the university brings to the table—world-class speakers, top-notch athletics, an unbelievable library system—and Madison is damn near perfect. Except…

While the citizenry is overwhelming tolerant and well-meaning, it’s also overwhelmingly white. There are no ethnic neighborhoods to speak of and the city is close to being a monoculture, although locals will tell you the west side is more yuppie and the east side is more hippie. Worringly, capitalist swine have discovered that Madison’s je ne sais quoi can be packaged, marketed, and sold. Local businesses are slowly losing ground to big chains and while it’s refreshing to see locals stomp and shout and chant “We don’t want them here!” they still come and, once they gain a foothold, they thrive—like any invasive species. The hippie feel of Madison is being washed away, the tie-dye replaced by neck ties. It pains me to see it and I feel in another decade the Madison I knew might be unrecognizable. I probably won’t be here forever, and I will never regret the time that I’ve spent here. Although I’ve only lived in Madison a total of 8 years out of my 32, it is and will always be home to me.

3. For what Greek myth do you feel the greatest personal affinity?
Without a doubt, The Iliad. Achilles is my favorite character in literature and I see a lot myself in him, both the good and the bad—but mostly his impetuousness. His cup of emotions is full to the brim and it doesn’t take much jostling for it to spill over. He’s arrogant and quick to anger but also capable of great love. Lots of people die in The Iliad and the survivors mourn them, but no one mourns like Achilles. He’s reduced to sobbing in the dust when he learns of Patroclus’ death—quite an unmanly action for an ancient Greek. The chapters where he prepares for and then begins his assault on Troy, ending with Hector’s death are incredible; the sheer bad-assery of this whole sequence has never been equalled in any form of art for my money. And all this anger, this vengeance, stems from a broken heart.

I’ve lost track how many times I’ve read The Iliad but I’d guess it’s six or seven, far more than any other book.

4. Is soccer (or football, as the rest of the world knows it) really superior to our American sports? Why or why not?
Sport is a strange thing. In one sense it carries way too much importance in the average person’s life. I remember reading that cases of domestic violence in Wisconsin spike after the Packers lose, which makes me ill. There’s also the financial aspect where teams soak fans for as much money as possible. On the other hand, sport clearly taps deeply into the human psyche on some level so it’s not just a silly diversion either. As you may know, I’m really into footie and usually feel like this needs justification, either to the American sports fan who thinks it’s a pansy game or to the intellectual who thinks all sports are crude.

To actually answer your question, I do think footie is superior to American sports for a number of reasons. For one, it’s non-stop; there is no other sport I know of that’s so unforgiving of a bathroom break. No time outs. No long stoppages of play for review. No break between snaps or pitches or free throws. No commercial breaks, which is why the sport struggles to get corporate backing in this country. [These reasons are also, in fact, why players feign injuries and roll around on the ground---simply to catch their breath] This non-stop nature gives the game a flow. Even a sputtering game can erupt into an end-to-end affair, and vice-versa. It’s utterly unpredictable what will happen next.

Two, it’s as simple or complex as you like. Most Americans don’t understand tactics or formations, and I readily admit I don’t like baseball and basketball because I don’t really get the subtleties of what’s going on. Likewise, in soccer there are a number of different formations that can look radically different depending on the personnel deployed and their individual instructions, i.e. whether the manager tells them to attack, defend, foul, play wide, play long ball, etc. On the flip side, you can just easily chuck eleven guys on the field and tell them to do what comes naturally. One Spanish national team manager once said his only tactic was to put eleven guys on the field who understood each other and were happy. Imagine Bill Parcells saying that in a press conference…

Third, and probably most importantly, soccer reflects culture. Argentinians play differently than the English, who play differently than the Germans, who are different from the Italians, who are nothing like the Nigerians, who are distinct from the South Koreans…and so on. One of the chief problems facing the US right now is our lack of a soccer culture, which tends to reflect that of the suburban soccer mom (I’ll let you suss that one out yourself.) The World Cup is the spectacle it is because of these clashing styles. As basketball and baseball continue to grow in global popularity I think they, too, will develop unique styles and become serious challengers to US dominance. It’s one way nations gain and give respect to each other, and I often think the average American needs to stop chanting “U-S-A!” long enough to see that other countries exist and their unique qualities can be admired, even envied. Our current foreign policy seems to be “We’re the best at everything, all the time,” and that makes it so much sweeter for people around the world when teams like the Czech Republic and Ghana get a chance to stuff it down our collective throats on the soccer pitch.

5. Would you be able to live without writing?
The simple answer is yes, because I’ve lived a good portion of my life without writing so I see that it can be done. Whether I could be happy living without writing, at this point, is doubtful. I’ve always had an overactive imagination and an inclination to tell stories. For a long time I considered this impulse as being not very serious and ignored it. Now, I realize writing entertaining stories is as good of a way to spend my life as any other and at least this way I won’t have any regrets.

My goal is to write as much as I can in hopes of entertaining people, primarily because I enjoy reading so much myself. Like many writers, I used to harbor illusions that I’d write the Great American Novel that would be studied for centuries but I’ve disabused myself of those notions. Now I just try to write stories that I would want to read, and even the limited success I’ve enjoyed makes me feel like I’d be doing myself a disservice if I turned my back on this impulse to write. Whatever it is, wherever it comes from, it’s very much a part of who I am and who I suppose I always will be.

FIN