I’d like to take a moment right now to talk about a recent scientific discovery that Max and I stumbled upon a few months ago, and only now do I feel I have enough to write about it.
Those of you familiar with my previous work will of course have heard of the now legendary-in-some-circles “Kimura-Wong Group Involuntary Reaction to Lovable Items Effect (G.I.R.L.I.E.)” Mr. Kimura and I, after many hours of observation of both the male and female of the human species (that is to say, homo sapiens sapiens (or, if space is a concern, homo sapiens^2)), concluded that groups of individuals, especially females, will involuntarily react to items deemed cute, cuddly, adorable or a combination of all three.
Further clinical analysis shows that, upon visual contact with such an item, a chain reaction with minimal latency will spread through the group in the form of a vocalized “Awwwwwww.” If sufficiently “cute” enough, vocalization may be accompanied by the action of covering the mouth with one or both hands. The length of this vocalization depends on multiple factors:
Curiously, Kimura and I noted that this effect is not replicated in a group of male individuals. However, for reasons still yet unknown, if a number of males are present during a group female vocalization, they too will join in if they have some sort of relationship, platonic or otherwise, with members of the female group (Attached Males). A large number of Non-Attached Males cannot stop G.I.R.L.I.E., but can seriously cut down on expected length of vocalization. Finally, the larger the group of females, the lower the “Wuvable Index” of an item needs to be to elicit this response. The inverse is also true.
To prove this effect, I’ve arranged a very simple demonstration for you. Gather a group of at least three females around your computer, and listen carefully to their reaction as you scroll down and show them the following picture:
And now, I’d like to announce a new discovery. Upon entry into the realm of higher education, Mr. Geiger and I have noted a curious phenomenon, which we have called the “Geiger-Wong Collegiate Retrograde Aging Effect.”
Upon adaptation to “dorm life,” this effect immediately takes place. Males and females aged eighteen or more begin to exhibit behavior only seen in individuals approximately ten years younger. That is to say, college makes you “this many “(one must imagine a grown man holding up eight fingers and smiling adorably).
Conversational topics shift from the level of sophistication expected from young adults to a much simpler mode. Topics range from defunct television shows (especially on “Nickelodeon” channel), activities partaken during pre-teen years and possibly embarrassing but character-revealing stories of that time period, and subject matter generally appealing to the pre-teen male (ninjas, dinosaurs, astronauts, horses). More tellingly, actions that are most eagerly pursued by eight-year olds suddenly are taken on by college students. Examples of this range from playing with one’s food (getting way too much food, shaping excess food into juvenile shapes and structures, blowing bubbles in milk), unhealthy diet (Cocoa Puffs for dinner, overindulgence of French fried potatoes), irrational spontaneity (swimming in school fountain, kicking a skateboard with a cake on it), and general lack of inhibition and control.
Theories for this behavior are all over the map. I myself, having lent my name to this phenomenon, speculate that during the ages of eight to twelve, that is, immediately prior to one’s teenage years, parental control is the strictest, perhaps due in part to parental figures sensing that, very soon, any semblance of parental control will utterly disappear upon the child reaching puberty. Conversely, for the individual aged eight to twelve, the want and need for freedom becomes more urgent than any other time in one’s life, the body perhaps dimly sensing that, very soon, any innocence or freedom from societal, social, and peer pressure will be replaced by adult responsibility and maturity as soon as puberty is reached.
This rift – the parent’s will to control and the child’s will to be free both reaching their most urgent states, causes tremendous stress to the child, because despite their inclinations, the parents will always win. Thus, this urge to express one’s desires at this age is repressed until a time where it becomes both safe and culturally acceptable to express them again, a time where complete freedom from parental units is reached, that is freshman year at college. On top of this repression/release dichotomy, I believe that, upon facing the stress of the college experience, one naturally reverts to a time before the worries of the world are thrust upon one’s shoulders, that is, pre-pubescence.
How long this effect remains (or if it wears off ever at all) remains to be seen.
-f.w.
Where to begin?
Perhaps at the beginning. In any case, the length of this particular Word document as I type furiously at it suggests that this post may very well be a multi-part deal as a result of my laziness. But let us not dally on such matters.
While biking is the hippie self-propelled transportation of choice up in the good ol’ Northwest, down here, the preferred mode is the longboard. Lacking both the necessary funds to legitimately acquire a pimpin’ longboard, and not wishing to appear to be compensating for anything whatsoever, I made sure to bring my skateboard when I got back from break.
For those of you familiar with my trials and tribulations, this is the very same skateboard I got for free at Jason’s rave, and the very same board which has followed me from Disneyland to Egypt with its rebellious Independent brand trucks and jammin’ Jamaica flag wheels. With this weapon of mass destruction, I set off to carve up USC with my groovy deck and my groovier mad skating skills. I had watched the just released Almost skating video, featuring Rodney Mullen and Daewon Song. I had played just about every Tony Hawk game, and can reliably hit a relatively impressive score. Armed with this knowledge, I set out.
What they don’t tell you in both the Tony Hawk games or the skate videos is that skateboarding is hard. Tony launches fifteen feet vertically in the air spinning around three full rotations and landing it. I am more likely to fall off my board, slide a painful fifteen lateral feet along the pavement before getting hit by a USC tram, causing my battered spine to torque three full rotations before I land back on the bloody pavement dead as a doorknob.
All the coolest skateboarding kids start a skating run by first grabbing the nose, jogging, and then tossing the board across the pavement and running along as it rolls across the ground, and then jumping on it, the added momentum of the jog adding yet more speed. It is a good way to get quick speed, and looks very very cool.
Yesterday, I attempted this maneuver. I dropped the board as per the fashion described, and attempted to hop on. I quickly lost balance, and fell off, shooting the board forward as I fell back. Luckily, I had managed to stay on my feet, but now I had to sprint to catch up to it, and when I finally did, I managed to hold myself on it for three seconds before it shot out from under me again. At this point I noticed it was headed into a wall, so I quickly (and as coolly as possible) tapped it with my foot to veer it back on course, but tapping a skateboard precisely while running full tilt looks a little bit like if you asked a kid with Downs Syndrome to imitate Michael Jackson’s moves.
By now, I had gathered the nerve to attempt to jump back on again, and this time, I pushed off several times, before falling back and stepping off yet again. By the time I finally got a hold of the board, the entire population gathered in front of Trojan Grounds (a little convenience store/coffee shop) was staring at me and laughing, and I was basically at my destination. What this amounts to is basically running after my board like a moron, and riding it less than one percent of the time, and with tons of people knowing that I suck, and I am hilarious at sucking.
This is only one of a string of embarrassing attempts at merging into skate culture, but instead mistaking my accelerator for my brake and causing a forty-car pileup on the highway to cool. When returning some equipment to a building off campus today, I saw a crack in the sidewalk. “It’s totally cool,” I thought to myself, “I will pop the nose up a bit, and clear my front wheels and it’ll be groovy and I’ll look like a mofo.” I successfully execute this deft maneuver, but fail to realize that a skateboard has both front and rear wheels, which meant the wheels lodged themselves in the crack, halting my skateboard instantly, while inertia missed the memo and my body kept going, right into a near faceplant on the pavement right in front of a fly hunny. “Whoa,” she said with a smirk, “be careful.” “Shut your pie-hole!” I thought (very loudly), while my mouth stammered “Yeah I need more practice.” “You sure do,” she threw back helpfully as she walked out of my life forever.
Once, returning from a particularly grueling day of skateboarding (read: falling and almost taking off people’s shins), I ran into my R.A. John in the hall. “Oh,” he said, “you skateboard?” I laughed loudly at the thought of me actually skateboarding, but he persuaded me to head out into the courtyard with him and show him my mad skills. He leapt on and kickflipped the pants off the board, landing it and doing all sorts of crazy stuff with skills that apparently come with being born in California. At least I know that, being born in Seattle, I can sit around, play guitar and commune with nature better than he ever could hope.
Not content to quite write off the whole idea of putting wheels on a plank of wood as a viable form of transportation, and perhaps influenced by the ever pressing need to acquire the proverbial “Benjamins,” Max and I have decided to attempt to make custom longboards to be sold to the various Spoiled Children who attend our University. A longboard is basically what it sounds like – a longer skateboard, often with fatter wheels, and intended for smooth riding, speed, ultimate coolness, while simultaneously eliminating the potential of falling on your face in front of hot chicks because it’s meant to navigate the perils of Los Angeles pavement. With absolutely zero experience with this type of board between us, this venture is perhaps doomed from the start, but nonetheless, we have some brilliant ideas, in my opinion.
For example, taking a cue from the Fast and Furious culture evidently enjoyed by Socal youth, the first modification would be the addition of fat coils of EL Wire in the shape of a Tiki God on the underside. On top of a neat-o glowing design, this would also give the board fat neon underlights, which would make you the pimpinest boarder alive as you cruised around at three in the morning. Unfortunately, there really isn’t anyone around to see you, but with a board this cool, you wouldn’t even need direct witnesses. And if you’re wanting people to look and gawk at you, then we sure as hell won’t sell you this board.
In addition, we would mount a headlamp flashlight on the nose, so you can see the pavement you’re just about to conquer in breathtaking detail. The light would function both at night, and during the day. Riders of this board are the kind of people who want to look their enemy right in the face right before they skate right over it. Any riders who are at all squeamish with the concept of pavement, or disfiguring an enemy’s face with two longboard wheel tracks raked across it need not apply.
Those wheel tracks aren’t just your standard wimpy 70 mm soft longboard wheels, no sir. We’re going to get fat knobby offroad tires, which is the equivalent of taking Big Foot’s wheels and mounting them on your Jetta station wagon. That means any sidewalk crack smaller than the Marianas Trench better look out, because they’re about to get ridden over. In addition, the 30% of Los Angeles that is still unpaved better look out too, because, who knows? Some patch of grass might be sitting there, all growing, and then WHAM. Shit wrecked all over the place!
And on top of those fat knobby tires, Max and I will spend hours in the lab and engineer micro spinner rims, so that your tires appear to be in motion even when you are at a dead standstill. This will confuse all the player haters and biters who want a piece of your sweet board, because they will think “Oh the board is still moving now is my c
hance to hop on it!” But they’ll be wrong. They’ll run over all excited and patting themselves on the back for being so observant and then WHAM. Shit wrecked all over the place.
The problem with this scheme is, of course, it is still in the all-important conceptual stage. But as soon as we get a longboard, oh man. I don’t even want to think about what might happen, or even the amount of fecal matter that will get ruined.
Also, I might note that South Central Los Angeles is not the best place to pick up longboards and longboard accessories. If you want nightly LAPD Helicopter raids, fake IDs, dorms with windows barred like liquor stores (and conversely, liquor stores with barred windows akin to USC’s dormitories), then you’re definitely in the right place. But longboards? Nuh-uh. A Crip with a bandanna placed carefully on the “crip side” is going to have his hand on his Tec-9 nine millimeter at all times, not pushing himself off spastically on a Sector Nine longboard.
Let me give you an idea of the SC (South Central) crowd. I once drove past a group of four people around a used car on the side of the road, price all soaped into the windshield and everything. They stood around approvingly while one of them activated a black box in his hand. The car leapt to its feet, and proceeded to bump along courtesy an insane hydraulics setup. The men stood around, hands under their chins, appraising the vehicle approvingly. To imagine these same people cruising around Compton on longboards would be like imagining a maharajah humping his way around with one of those big fat exercise balls with handles on them like we had in middle school – that is, they would look ridiculous. Besides, hydraulic suspension and an automobile affords a greater degree of cover in the event of a shootout – the kind of cover that a plank of plywood ain’t gonna match up with.
With this in mind, along with the fact that Los Angeles and her constant 80-degree cloudless days was starting to screw with my sense of time (I would awake, walk outside and think that I was stuck in an infinite loop because everything looked the same every day), I decided to call Reed up and rather impulsively go to San Fransisco for the weekend before Valentine’s Day. Saint Valentine and his card-making cohorts could all collectively suck it, I thought, as I revved up the Wongmobile and drove out towards Pomona. I’m going north, to a city where trees aren’t placed like traffic lights along the boulevard. To a place where civil engineers know that rain collects at the lowest point, so you need to put little holes at those points so roads don’t become wading pools for cars to slip around and kill each other in.
As I write these words, Los Angeles is in the midst of a record-breaking rainfall year. I hear a sharp cracking noise. I think it’s thunder at first, but then realize it’s too close to sound like thunder. Outside, I hear a girl screaming. I run down and this is what I see:
A tree decided to uproot itself and take out some parked cars with it.
In short, I want to go to a place where trees don’t commit suicide when they get some water. And, really, is that too much to ask?
Next time: Stanford and how hours of practice at USC’s pool table payed off, San Fransisco in a single day and drunk drivers and sleeping on the side of the road. Still to come: Singles Awareness Day (S.A.D.) and making a movie in twenty four hours. I’ll update as I go.
-f.w.
