Clairely

I care about sports approximately once every two years

So I’m sitting at home in pajamas, watching the Olympics and eating biscuits. Because nothing makes you feel good about yourself like eating wads of flaky, from-a-Pillsbury-can dough while overly muscular people entertain you with feats of athletic greatness.

Here are some thoughts I’ve had while watching the Olympics this year:

Usain Bolt is ten million times cooler than Michael Phelps. He’s better looking and he has gold shoes. I want his shoes.

I always wanted to be a gymnast but I was too tall. Instead I got to go through puberty, develop social skills and have a normal, well-rounded life. But sometimes I still wish I could do a backflip.

Bob Costas hasn’t done a push-up in his life

Full-body swimsuits have ruined men’s swimming for female spectators everywhere.

So there’s a power-walking event in the Olympics? How embarrassing is that? You’re moving into your suite in the Olympic Village and someone asks what sport you play. What do you tell them? “Yeah…I do walking. How about you? The decathlon, huh? Well, that’s pretty cool, I gotta go to practice now. I have a pretty rigorous training schedule.”

…Why do divers shower after they get out of the water?

How are scrunchies still the hair tie of choice among gymnasts? At least they finally got over that god-awful poofy bang phase.

There’s this adorable, 21-year-old sprinter from Jamaica named Shelly Ann Fraser. She has a mouth full of braces and when she won the 100-meter race, she flung herself onto the track and kicked her feet up in the air. She looked like a kid who had just received a puppy for a her birthday. I kind of adore her.

Women's beach vollyball looks like softcore porn

I always root for Russia. They all look so pasty and unhappy, I want them to win. Also to say “Moose and Squirrel” in all their interviews.

Male gymnasts wear stirrup pants.

The human steeplechase is the best thing I’ve ever seen.

Beijing: trading human rights for freestyle dressage since 2008

When the 2006 Winter Olympics started, I came home from work every day and watched ice skaters cry over sequins. I don’t know what my deal was, but I couldn’t get enough of the Olympics. Friends would come over to hang out, and I would make them watch speed skating. I'd be at a party and realize that I'd rather be watching the women's slalom. When that one Italian guy dropped the other Italian girl in the “ice dancing” competition, I couldn’t stop talking about the death stare they gave each other. It was amazing. You could almost see the years of crushed dreams repressed frustrations seeping out of them.

I’m into the Olympics. I’ve been counting down the days until the opening ceremonies on August 8 because it means that for three weeks, my life will be full of fencing rivalries, badminton drama and 14-year-old girls falling off the balance beam instead of doing what they should be doing—going through puberty. I thought I had a month left to wait, but I was wrong. I’d completely forgotten about the Olympic trials!  My television politely reminded me of this fact yesterday, when it broadcasted track and field for my viewing excitement. I think I watched about three hours of it yesterday. So far, I’ve seen one man get a leg cramp three steps into the 100m race, a woman fall and break something important enough to put her in a wheelchair, and another woman who dove for the finish line and reached it…with her face. August is going to be awesome.

Here are some things I want to know about the Olympics:

1)    What do the athletes do when they’re NOT competing? So every few years you get to try for a gold medal. And the rest of the time you just…play water polo?

2)    What happens to the people who come in last place? They train so hard and then fail miserably. I bet they feel like jerks.

3)    What the hell is up with rhythm gymnastics?

Night fever, night fever

Things I have learned after attending a roller derby disco night that combines the art of drinking with the art of roller skating to create one glorious, knee high sock-themed extravaganza:

You’re not falling down cause you’re drunk, you’re falling down cause you suck

Bee Gees songs are good for something.

The level of disappointment you feel upon learning that they’re renting normal roller skates and not the kind of skates that strap over shoes is roughly akin to the time you ran down the stairs on Christmas morning only to find that Santa had not brought you a live unicorn.

When you meet someone who is wearing an American Gladiators costume, you will instantly want to become her friend.

Before you ask why someone isn’t wearing skates, you should check their feet to make sure that they’re not just really, really short.

After 3 Jell-O shots you will forget that you are wearing a mini-skirt and you will begin to sit and stand in ways that require more clothing.

There is always one guy who is really good at skating.

That guy is a douche.

To hipsters, “diversity” equals one Asian friend.

If you are wearing roller skates and you find that you have to pee, you have to ask yourself, is it really worth it?

It’s possible to run into co-workers.

Maybe Brooklyn doesn’t suck after all.

and with this, I will lose your respect

I like music. People know this about me, the same way they know that Will Ferrell has curly leg hair or that Amy Winehouse smells like a grandpa. They don’t really remember where or how they learned such a fact, but if asked the opinion on the matter, they would say that it’s true.

The thing is, though, that I don’t know anything about music. I can’t play an instrument, I can’t sing, I have no rhythm, and a good friend who is a jazz musician thinks I’m tone deaf. I don’t think I’m tone deaf, I just think I’m a WASP. I come from a long line of pearl earrings and church bake sales; I’m never going to be uninhibited enough to let my soul seep through the strings of a guitar.

I’m not interested in music except for when I’m listening to it. I don’t read Pitchfork reviews and I only buy Paste Magazine when the free CD looks appealing, which is about twice a year. I don’t talk about music very often, and I write about it even less—I’d do the occasional music review when I worked for a newspaper in Nashville, but I was not one of the regular “music writers,” who went to five shows a week and talked about musicians as if they were close, personal friends. “Billy has changed,” they’d say when the new Smashing Pumpkins album came out, or “Did you see Jack’s hair?” referring to Nashville’s biggest mainstream-but-still-cool claim to fame. How ridiculous, I’d think to myself, and then I’d go home and make some finger sandwiches and lemonade.

But I really, really like music. I like discovering a new sound that shows me a part of myself I never knew was there, and I like familiar songs that transport me back to the moment I first heard them, like when I was seven years old and heard “American Pie” while on a family vacation to Florida, or the time I danced on the windowsill of my childhood home to Elvis Presley’s “Teddy Bear.” It’s such a short song, only one minute and 48 seconds, but no matter how old I grow or where I move, it will never change and when I hear it, I feel 10 years old again. For some reason, I like knowing that.

So what else do I like? I like the Beatles. The Who. Bob Dylan. The Clash. Led Zeppelin. The Doors. The Zombies. Marvin Gaye. James Brown. Jimi Hendrix. Buddy Holly. Elvis. Parliament Funkadelic. This weird band from the 1960s called Fairport Convention. One of my favorite CDs came from a 2005 issue of Oxford American magazine, and I find myself wishing I had better access to people like Bessie Smith and Blind Willie McTell. I love Sleater Kinney and Le Tigre. The Gossip has underwhelming lyrics, but Beth Ditto’s voice is so fantastic that “Fire Sign” is easily one of the best songs of the decade. The Arcade Fire. Ben Folds. Billie Holiday. Patti Smith. Pulp. Blondie. The Rolling Stones. Blur, although I can’t listen to them anymore because they remind me of 10th grade study hall. Chuck Berry. Bo Diddley. Cold War Kids. I bought my first Velvet Underground album when I was 14. Jethro Tull. Van Morrison. Joni Mitchell. LCD Soundsystem. Beastie Boys. CCR and CSN&Y. I love David Bowie but I love John Lennon even more. Johnny Cash. Fiona Apple. Simon and Garfunkel, with the exception of  “Bridge Over Troubled Water,” which is a bad song and you're a bad person for liking it. Sufjan Stevens. The Yeah Yeah Yeahs. Wolf Parade. Louis Armstrong. M.I.A.

But there’s something I’ve never told anyone. It’s kind of hard for me to admit, so I’m just going to say it and get it over with:

I don’t really like Radiohead.

I don’t hate them or anything—I have four of their albums—it’s just that I like early Radiohead the best, before Thom Yorke really knew what he was doing. My favorite album is The Bends, even though no one ever agrees with me when I argue in its favor. It’s the unloved middle child, after the debut album but before their Sgt. Pepper-like digi-sound reinvention, so people tend to forget about it. But you know what? Sgt. Pepper is my least favorite Beatles album, and Radiohead lost me at OK Computer. I recognize the album’s originality and I appreciate the way I do Renaissance art that looks like it was hard to paint. I’ve heard it at hundreds of parties and during hundreds rides in other people’s cars, and it has become so familiar to me that it’s kind of comforting, but I don’t think I’ve ever, EVER listened to OK Computer voluntarily. And Kid A? Boring as all hell. Hail to the Thief? Thanks, but I’d rather not. I downloaded In Rainbows for free, and then I listened to it once. I just…I don’t like Radiohead anymore.

It’s a hard thing to admit, this Radiohead indifference. It’s like being an English major who doesn’t like Shakespeare. Which, unfortunately, is another category to which I belong. Yeah yeah, reinventing the English language as we know it , the art of the metaphor, lyrical rhythm and romantic sonnets, never-before-done literary tricks, but two 14-year-olds who commit suicide because their families don’t get along? Lifetime mini-series alert.

I’m not all poor taste and bad decisions, though. Sure, so I don’t like Hamlet or Macbeth, but I adore A Comedy of Errors. It has identical twins and hilarious mix-ups. Like the Parent Trap!

Know what I also don’t like? Ice cream.

Yes or No

So remember that tsunami that hit Indonesia in 2004? The U.S. Geological Survey said it was the equivalent of 23,000 Hiroshima-type atomic bombs, and when I heard that I was all, “Crap! That sucks.” So I gave money to the victims. Actually, I gave money to UNICEF to give to the victims. I really have no idea if it got there. I’m like, 35-40% sure that I actually helped. But then there was Katrina and Wilma and the California wildfires and the China earthquake and the Burma earthquake and the floods in North Korea and the floods in Mexico and the floods in the Midwest and suddenly natural disasters seemed way overdone. So I stopped giving money and spent it on shoes and lattes instead.

But UNICEF still believes in me. They think that I still want to save the world. Every few months I get a letter from them, asking for a contribution. They’ve followed me from apartment to apartment, from job to grad school and back to job, and they won’t give up. They know that if they catch me on the right day—after I’ve just finished reading about a homeless orphan-turned Olympic athlete, or watched an Animal Planet special on kittens—that I might, just might give them some money. So they keep at it. They’ll do anything to get my attention. Case in point: this is the front of an envelope I received from them last week.

First of all, this is the most blatant advertising campaign I’ve ever seen. UNICEF is not playing games here. This is the starving baby equivalent of the “Nice shoes, wanna fuck?” dating technique. You have to give them credit for that.

But more importantly, I really think that my answer is “I don’t care.” Because I don’t. Okay, sure, I donate some money to charities. I used to volunteer at a soup kitchen (but homeless people smell and I hated it). I work in mainstream media and listen to NPR. I adopted a dog from the pound. I drink organic milk. I recycle. But I don’t care, not really.

I’m never going to fly to Africa and build a schoolhouse. I’m not going to repair the levees or pick up trash on the highway. I might volunteer to wipe off wildlife after an oil spill, but that’s only because I want to pet a baby seal. I’m not going to stand up for the rights of oppressed people. I think it's important, I just want someone else to do it. Although I will read New York Times articles about them. I’ll look at pictures of their misfortune, shake my head and push away my low fat blueberry muffin in disgust. And every few years, after an especially good episode of Meerkat Manor, I might pull out my checkbook again. So keep at it, UNICEF. There’s hope for me yet. One day I might just check the right box. Unfortunately for you, that day has not yet arrived.

And besides, as my friend, Marc, put it: “I don't understand what the problem is, they've got a glass of milk. That should be plenty.”

Keep in mind that I also ate cookies for breakfast this morning

I started running when I was eleven. I ran around my subdivision then later extended my route up the street and into the neighboring community. Most eleven-year-olds don’t go jogging for fun, but I was in 6th grade—deep into the teen magazine phase—and I knew that I should exercise if I wanted to be pretty and kiss boys. So I tried running. And I discovered that I really liked it. I’m not what one would ever call “athletic” or even “coordinated,” but running is just an extension of walking, and I can handle that.  Well, except for the one time I fell face-first onto the sidewalk. In front of the local college's entire freshman class.

I love running. It puts me in a good mood. Those first few miles— before I start to sweat or breathe heavily, before my leg or my foot or my back or whatever it is that’s going to bother me today hasn’t yet realized that it isn’t in the mood to do this—go by so smoothly. I move so easy and fast, I can’t think of anything in the world that feels better. Well, anything that I can do with my clothes on.

I’m not very good at running. In fact, given the frequency with which I do it, I’m downright awful. The longest distance I tried was thirteen miles, and that was in high school. Nowadays, I stick to something between three and six miles. But I do run every day. I don’t like running with a partner. I don’t like running inside. I don’t like running on a track. I don’t like running in a race. I prefer to run outside, alone, and always to music. I run in the rain (which I like) and the snow (which I don’t) and the heat (at least I can get a tan). I run the same route over and over again, and when I’m forced to change it, even temporarily, I react like a small child who has missed her naptime. I can’t tell you how much I hate those Race for the Cure people, they ruin my life at least once a week.

When I started running, I used a Walkman. Then I switched to a CD player. Now I use an iPod. But I think the biggest change over the years has been my gradual ability to spit in public.

I don’t know if it’s just me, but least once a run— two if it’s winter—I have to stop for a second and hock up a big wad of phlegm. Yes, I decided to write about phlegm on the Internet. What about it?

When I was eleven, I was so horrified by the idea of spitting in public—and by “public” I mean the seven or eight cars that passed me on the tree-lined suburban street with a speed limit of 25 mph—that I used to wait until no one was around before I’d lean over a shrub and let it go. I could spit in front of other people during high school track practice because everyone else all did it too, but it was a different story when I ran by myself. When I lived in Nashville, my only rule was that I couldn’t spit directly in front of another pedestrian or anywhere near Ben Fold’s house.  But in New York, I just don’t care.  There are too many people here, I will never have a solitary moment on a run, so I spit right in front of them. Sometimes I even do it on the sidewalk because there’s no grass. And the thing is, no one seems to notice.

In New York, I’ve seen people having sex on a park bench. I’ve seen a man—a MAN—walk down the street in a leather miniskirt cut into little strips so that it resembles a limp ceiling fan. Once while riding the subway, I heard two girls discussing how they each caught herpes from the same boy. I’ve seen countless old people fall over. I live near an ER so I’m pretty sure I’ve seen some ambulance passengers who didn’t make to the hospital it in time. I saw a homeless man vomit all over himself in front of a Dunkin Donuts. I watched a vendor pick an apple out of the gutter, rub it on his shirt, and put it back on his fruit stand. I listened to a couple break up in a bagel shop. Once, while running, I saw a woman “trotting” around Central Park, dressed up in an S&M horse costume, complete with hooves and a tail. So I really don’t care if I spit in public anymore.

I also walk my dog in mismatched pajamas, right in front of the largest cathedral in the world. Families from Iowa exit their tour bus and the first thing they see if me, in Cat-in-the-Hat boxers, bending over to pick up my dog’s poop with a plastic bag. I don’t really mind it. I just hope I don’t make it into any of their vacation photos.

Does anyone even read this?

I don’t know why I have this blog. I never write here. I never write anywhere, really.  Well, I wrote an article for Time Magazine, so there’s that. But I don’t write for fun anymore. I’m going to try to fix that. I’m going to try to write something every day this week. Either I’ll hate it and go back to once-a-season blogging, or I’ll get into a groove. We’ll see.

Or, alternately, "Who's Your Daddy?"

John McCain wrote a book called "Faith of My Fathers." Barack Obama wrote a book called "Dreams From My Father." If Hillary writes a book, I hope she calls it "Fuck the Patriarchy."

Maybe the cavemen did it

Today’s issue of Columbia’s student paper contained an advertising insert for Geico car insurance. But Columbia is in the middle of Manhattan and most students don’t have cars.  This seems like an outrageously bad advertising idea. Like selling gloves outside an amputee support group.

Conversations with my mom

Mom: So I was driving down the street today, and you know those bronze sculptures of small children or animals that some people put in their yards?

Me: Yes.

Mom: Well, someone had a sculpture of a little girl swinging on a swing. It was in a beautifully manicured lawn, really spectacular. But it’s still cold outside so the little girl was wrapped in plastic to protect her from the weather. And I  drove by and I thought ‘Oh my god, she’s dead.’

Me: What?

Mom: You know, when little kids go missing and you find them three weeks later in the woods, wrapped in plastic.

Me: It looked like that?

Mom: Exactly like that. It was awful. They should have just let the statue get ruined by the winter because it would have been much better than having an ornamental murder scene in their front yard.