Home And Away Week
I don't know if you'd gathered--it comes up every so often, but we're not all critical readers--but I'm from Atlanta, Georgia. I'm from Atlanta proper, which is to say I'm within walking distance of downtown; this, as opposed to Alfonzo or Brody, who live in the 'burbs, or what they would call "Metro Atlanta".
I had, for the first time in my life, the duty of showing Atlanta to a friend from another city; in planning for the Alan Orlanski tour of Atlanta, I came across a saying about my fair city: "It's a good place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit." Aside from being a reversal of a well-known phrase, it really captures everything you need to know: at any given moment, you and the people you know are the most entertaining thing around.
It isn't like small, semi-rural towns, where all there is to do on weekends is hang out in parking lots. When you spend time with friends, you go out and you do things, like get stoned and eat at the Waffle House, or go mini-golfing, or play air hockey. I know that anybody reading this is probably gathering a pretty low standard of fun from my hometown, but that just means you've missed the point. You don't go putt-putting by yourself, and you sure as hell don't get stoned and go to Waffle House by yourself (note, if you do, tell someone and they will help you). You go with your friends, or just people you know. Sometimes you go with people you don't know, or a mixture. Sometimes you run into people you know, and the people you were with merge with the new group, or people switch from one group to another. The most entertaining thing, at any given moment, is the person sitting next to you.
So what do I miss? My friends. The gang, the posse, the layabout squad, etc. Up here, in St. Louis, people know me as Alan, as Alan J. Orlanski, sometimes as just Orlanski. Sometimes I'm lumped in with the people around me, so I become Chaz and Alan, or Alan and Marina; but there's one combo, one duo, one powerhouse of loafing that just cannot be beat.
Alan and Carl. We aren't out to get you. We aren't out to get anything. Most of the time, we're not even out.
I swear to you, ever since I met Carl, I've spent more time sitting than I had in the previous 16 years of my life. That's just a statistic, though. The best way to describe Carl is to say he was my first real male friend. I had had male friends before, but it was different for two reasons : 1. They were boys. 2. The friendships were independant of gender. I would have been friends with all the same people up until Carl, had I been a girl.
Carl and I relate to each other through our impoverished masculinity. From 7th grade to 10th grade, I was taught to believe that one should relate, whenever possible, through emotions and tenderness. My Junior High spent a lot of time indoctrinating us with that concept; I realize, in hindsight, that my school is a hippie-liberal school run by squishy women. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, nor is there anything wrong with hippie-liberal squishiness. My problem was that I was relating to people in a very feminine way, because that is what I had been taught to do. My male peers took the emotional communication theory less to heart, and I came out of 10th grade a fairly confused, feminine fellow.
Carl came the next Fall and we met in Jazz band, though it took time for me to get used to him. I remember, sometime in October 2002, he called me (quite unexpectedly) and asked if I wanted to go see Red Dragon with him. I thought him very inappropriate and too forthcoming. I, over the years, had been taught to be cagey and slow-moving; I had forgotten the days of my youth, where you simply pick up the phone and call who you want to hang out with. I thought, to myself, "But I hardly know him." I see now that I was thinking like a girl.
"Alan and Carl" became a recognizable social unit far before we became comfortable with it. It was an easy pair to make; we both played trumpet, both wore hawaiian shirts, were both social failures on a large scale, AND we hung out a lot. Who wouldn't have lumped us together?
I'm kinda glossing through the details, at this point. There came a certain stage in our friendship where things just started falling together in a zipper-like fashion. Carl's house became, over time, the default location; I compared his house to mine, and realized that his house has everything my house has, only bigger or somehow better. This is fortunate, because Carl is too lazy to have driven to my house all those times. No one can say for sure whether my constant presence in Carl's house was what made his family like me so much, or whether his family's affection for me was why I was there whenever possible, but the answer likely falls somewhere between the two.
Stu and Lucy, and his sister, Katherine; they are like extended family. I've eaten many dinners with them, celebrated birthdays, gone on vacation...I have the information necessary to get into the house when they aren't home, and I have on more than one occasion. They say that you can't choose your family; the Britt's have shown me just what would happen if you could.
Listen to me, being such a modern-day ingrate. Keep in my that exaltation of Carl and the Britts is not meant to suggest a dissatisfaction with my own family. I come from a good home, but a very different one. Perhaps a detailed discussion of that for some other time.
Anyway, here's a drawing of Carl and his girlfriend, Kelsea. It was not until Kelsea drew this and sent it to me that I realized how to properly spell "Kelsea". At any rate, as an homage to her, I will go back and change all my misspellings, and deny they ever happened.
-------
Ah, yes. Something I like about St. Louis.... I hope that any St. Louis enthusiasts who might read this will forgive me for not going on at length here. I'm quite fond of the distance between things here. One of Atlanta's convenient aspects is that almost everything is within 5 to 15 minutes of where you are. Given that, I rarely have to make long trips, or even trips of a medium length. Furthermore, I can be frivolous and careless with my travels, because if I forget to do something, I'm always right around the corner from it.
St. Louis requires more thought and planning. If you want to go to Waffle House, you've got to drive for at least half an hour, so you'd better save your trip until you need those hashbrowns most. The closest Chick-Fil-A is Alfonzo's hangout; Westfield West County. Even Target is about 10 minutes away, so you'd better have a damn good reason to go.
This sounds like a complaint, and from most other people it would be. I, on the other hand, appreciate the experience of asking everyone you know if they want to come along, then piling into a car and driving there, making stops at all the places in-between which are too inconveinient to put off to another time. When we want to go on a pilgrimage from Atlanta, we have to go to Tennessee for fireworks, or The SC for vacation (Carolina, Carolina, here we coooooome). A useful pilgrimage from St. Louis can be done inside 2 hours, which is valuable for a college student who has no free time to speak of.
Speaking of no free time, I've got to keep cramming Russian before my test tomorrow. Thank God I'm taking it pass/fail, or else I might actually be worried.
I'm sorry if this post has hurt your eyes. It has hurt my fingers just as much.
-Alan
I had, for the first time in my life, the duty of showing Atlanta to a friend from another city; in planning for the Alan Orlanski tour of Atlanta, I came across a saying about my fair city: "It's a good place to live, but I wouldn't want to visit." Aside from being a reversal of a well-known phrase, it really captures everything you need to know: at any given moment, you and the people you know are the most entertaining thing around.
It isn't like small, semi-rural towns, where all there is to do on weekends is hang out in parking lots. When you spend time with friends, you go out and you do things, like get stoned and eat at the Waffle House, or go mini-golfing, or play air hockey. I know that anybody reading this is probably gathering a pretty low standard of fun from my hometown, but that just means you've missed the point. You don't go putt-putting by yourself, and you sure as hell don't get stoned and go to Waffle House by yourself (note, if you do, tell someone and they will help you). You go with your friends, or just people you know. Sometimes you go with people you don't know, or a mixture. Sometimes you run into people you know, and the people you were with merge with the new group, or people switch from one group to another. The most entertaining thing, at any given moment, is the person sitting next to you.
So what do I miss? My friends. The gang, the posse, the layabout squad, etc. Up here, in St. Louis, people know me as Alan, as Alan J. Orlanski, sometimes as just Orlanski. Sometimes I'm lumped in with the people around me, so I become Chaz and Alan, or Alan and Marina; but there's one combo, one duo, one powerhouse of loafing that just cannot be beat.
Alan and Carl. We aren't out to get you. We aren't out to get anything. Most of the time, we're not even out.
I swear to you, ever since I met Carl, I've spent more time sitting than I had in the previous 16 years of my life. That's just a statistic, though. The best way to describe Carl is to say he was my first real male friend. I had had male friends before, but it was different for two reasons : 1. They were boys. 2. The friendships were independant of gender. I would have been friends with all the same people up until Carl, had I been a girl.
Carl and I relate to each other through our impoverished masculinity. From 7th grade to 10th grade, I was taught to believe that one should relate, whenever possible, through emotions and tenderness. My Junior High spent a lot of time indoctrinating us with that concept; I realize, in hindsight, that my school is a hippie-liberal school run by squishy women. There is, of course, nothing wrong with this, nor is there anything wrong with hippie-liberal squishiness. My problem was that I was relating to people in a very feminine way, because that is what I had been taught to do. My male peers took the emotional communication theory less to heart, and I came out of 10th grade a fairly confused, feminine fellow.
Carl came the next Fall and we met in Jazz band, though it took time for me to get used to him. I remember, sometime in October 2002, he called me (quite unexpectedly) and asked if I wanted to go see Red Dragon with him. I thought him very inappropriate and too forthcoming. I, over the years, had been taught to be cagey and slow-moving; I had forgotten the days of my youth, where you simply pick up the phone and call who you want to hang out with. I thought, to myself, "But I hardly know him." I see now that I was thinking like a girl.
"Alan and Carl" became a recognizable social unit far before we became comfortable with it. It was an easy pair to make; we both played trumpet, both wore hawaiian shirts, were both social failures on a large scale, AND we hung out a lot. Who wouldn't have lumped us together?
I'm kinda glossing through the details, at this point. There came a certain stage in our friendship where things just started falling together in a zipper-like fashion. Carl's house became, over time, the default location; I compared his house to mine, and realized that his house has everything my house has, only bigger or somehow better. This is fortunate, because Carl is too lazy to have driven to my house all those times. No one can say for sure whether my constant presence in Carl's house was what made his family like me so much, or whether his family's affection for me was why I was there whenever possible, but the answer likely falls somewhere between the two.
Stu and Lucy, and his sister, Katherine; they are like extended family. I've eaten many dinners with them, celebrated birthdays, gone on vacation...I have the information necessary to get into the house when they aren't home, and I have on more than one occasion. They say that you can't choose your family; the Britt's have shown me just what would happen if you could.
Listen to me, being such a modern-day ingrate. Keep in my that exaltation of Carl and the Britts is not meant to suggest a dissatisfaction with my own family. I come from a good home, but a very different one. Perhaps a detailed discussion of that for some other time.
Anyway, here's a drawing of Carl and his girlfriend, Kelsea. It was not until Kelsea drew this and sent it to me that I realized how to properly spell "Kelsea". At any rate, as an homage to her, I will go back and change all my misspellings, and deny they ever happened.
-------
Ah, yes. Something I like about St. Louis.... I hope that any St. Louis enthusiasts who might read this will forgive me for not going on at length here. I'm quite fond of the distance between things here. One of Atlanta's convenient aspects is that almost everything is within 5 to 15 minutes of where you are. Given that, I rarely have to make long trips, or even trips of a medium length. Furthermore, I can be frivolous and careless with my travels, because if I forget to do something, I'm always right around the corner from it.
St. Louis requires more thought and planning. If you want to go to Waffle House, you've got to drive for at least half an hour, so you'd better save your trip until you need those hashbrowns most. The closest Chick-Fil-A is Alfonzo's hangout; Westfield West County. Even Target is about 10 minutes away, so you'd better have a damn good reason to go.
This sounds like a complaint, and from most other people it would be. I, on the other hand, appreciate the experience of asking everyone you know if they want to come along, then piling into a car and driving there, making stops at all the places in-between which are too inconveinient to put off to another time. When we want to go on a pilgrimage from Atlanta, we have to go to Tennessee for fireworks, or The SC for vacation (Carolina, Carolina, here we coooooome). A useful pilgrimage from St. Louis can be done inside 2 hours, which is valuable for a college student who has no free time to speak of.
Speaking of no free time, I've got to keep cramming Russian before my test tomorrow. Thank God I'm taking it pass/fail, or else I might actually be worried.
I'm sorry if this post has hurt your eyes. It has hurt my fingers just as much.
-Alan
posted by Alan Orlanski at 4:20 PM
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