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You’re supposed to get emotional at funerals and weddings. I do, but I also get emotional at two kinds of events that I don’t quite think, logically, I ought to: series finales and my kids birthdays.

Man, I hate series finales. To be clear, I don’t give a hoot when terrible television shows like, say, Joey or Teen Mom conclude. But when I like television shows, I watch them religiously; when those shows end, I inevitably feel teary-eyed. Not because I won’t get to watch the show anymore—indeed, in the case of shows like ER or Lost, finales come as more of a relief than anything else. Rather, it’s because, for whatever reason, finales are forever linked in my mind to the passage of time and growing older.

Lost “only” ran for six years, from 2004 to 2010. When it debuted, I lived in a two-bedroom condo in Culver City, California with my wife. By the time it concluded, I lived in New Jersey with my wife and two kids. I started watching House three jobs ago, and it’s still running.

Series end. Life continues. It moves fast.

This is the story about the first time I hit my father.

It starts in a car. We had moved past the Grand Fury and into our Plymouth Volaré era. Station wagon. Wood paneling on the sides, except that by the ’70s the wood had been replaced by wood-patterned vinyl stickers.

I am 15. Between my freshman and sophomore years in high school. A fat bundle of acne-covered self-consciousness. In ill-fitting jeans. My mother always bought the size she wished I could fit into. (I should make sure her casket is a size too small.) And schoolboy glasses from the Optical Department of Sears on Roosevelt Boulevard.

If you see someone on the street dressed like a middle-class person (say, in clean jeans and a striped shirt), how do you know whether they’re lower middle class or upper middle class? I think one of the best indicators is how much they’re carrying.

Lately I’ve been mostly on the lower end of middle class (although I’m kind of unusual along a couple axes). I think about this when I have to deal with my backpack, which is considered déclassé in places like art museums. My backpack has my three-year-old laptop. Because it’s three years old, the battery doesn’t last long and I also carry my power supply. It has my paper and pens, in case I want to write or draw, which is rarely. It has a cable to charge my old phone. It has gum and sometimes a snack. Sunscreen and a water bottle in summer. A raincoat and gloves in winter. Maybe a book in case I get bored.

If I were rich, I would carry a MacBook Air, an iPad mini as a reader, and my wallet. My wallet would serve as everything else that’s in my backpack now. Go out on the street and look, and I bet you’ll see that the richer people are carrying less.

zablotny:

This is a spot by TBWA/Chiat/Day for Apple, called ‘Photos Every Day’. The craft is fantastic, and there’s some subtle, unusual attention to detail in it.

Suppose you’re designing a programming language. What syntax would you use for a string constant? This isn’t a trick; it’s as simple as that. If you want to print Hello World then how do you specify a basic string like that in your language? 

I’ll give you a moment to think about it. 

Witzige (aber eigentlich traurige) Sachen aus Bushido Liedern.

We remember the shame and the slights.

Being 6 years old and walking toward passport control with Dad, who has sweaty hands, who clears his throat, who fixes his hair and shines up his shoes on the backs of his knees. All the pink-colored people are let by. But our dad is stopped. And we think, maybe it was by chance, until we see the same scene repeated year after year.

Being 7 and starting school and being told about society by a dad who was terrified even then that his outsiderness would be inherited by his children. He says, “When you look like we do, you must always be a thousand times better than everyone else if you don’t want to be refused.”

Being 9 and watching action films where dark men rape and kidnap, manipulate and lie, steal and abuse.

Being 10 and being chased by skinheads for the first, but not the last, time.

Being 12 and coming into a record store and noticing how the security guards circle like sharks. They talk into walkie-talkies, they follow only a few yards behind us. Move in a maximally noncriminal fashion. Walk normally. Breathe calmly. Walk up to that shelf of CDs and reach for that Tupac album in a way that indicates you are not planning to steal it.

Being 15 and sitting outside an electronics store when a police van pulls up, two officers get out, ask for ID, ask what’s up tonight. Then they hop back into the van.

And all the time, a fight inside. One voice says: They have no goddamn right to prejudge us. They can’t cordon off the city with their uniforms. They can’t make us feel insecure in our own neighbourhoods.

But the other voice says: What if it was our fault? We were probably talking too loudly. We were wearing hoodies and sneakers. We could have chosen to have less melanin in our skin. We happened to have last names that reminded this country that it is part of a larger world. We were young.

The sports-car guy lowered his shades, looked at me in my pink shirt and yelled: “Who are you looking at, pussy boy? Why are you wearing a pussy boy shirt, pussy boy?”
I was taken aback. I mean, this was a nice shirt, right? This was a $200 shirt. This was a Steven Alan shirt. Maybe it was the color of Pepto-Bismol. Maybe I looked a little like living diarrhea relief. But this was no pussy boy shirt. (I live in Brooklyn. I keep it real.)