Brett Favre: Fighting Reality or Second Half Star?

I’m in process here.  I’m a Packers fan forever.  My mom once got a perm that made her look like a different human being.  I was seven.  She terrified me so much, in fact, I screamed through the night, until she came in and I realized, by light of the moon, that her new perm made her look like the Packers’ kicker Chester Marcol.  Then I loved her perm.  Huge… Packers… fan.  And, I have been an enormous Brett Favre supporter, too, even as he joined the Jets last year (I felt my team pushed the guy out, something you shouldn’t do to a transcendent athlete, no matter his age).  But, now, after zigging and zagging and wiffle ball waffling, he’s landed in my new hometown, Minneapolis, playing for the most dreaded enemy of my team (The Vikings).  This turns my stomach.

Or did, rather.  I turned on Brett’s Viking news conference last night, ready to shout at the television.  Traitor!  Instead, there was Brett, being Brett Favre:  All of the rumors of his egomanicality, his manipulation of the system, seemed ridiculous.  Watch him.  He is straight up earnest.  It’s his legacy to destroy or buffer.  He’ll do what he wants.  This is America.  The Packers chose to go in a different direction.  He loved his time in Green Bay.  And, Brett wants to play football.  Right now.  Wasn’t sure a few weeks ago.  His daughter hadn’t given her opinion on the matter, but cried when he said he wasn’t going to play.  That broke his heart.  Coach Childress called him the other day.  Brett thought now or never.  He’s in Minnesota.  He’s going to play football.  

I’m not thinking about him as a traitor today.  I’m not even going to wax philosophical with regard to his transcendence on the field (good and bad transcendence), which I am wont to do (wrote a novel that focused at a certain point on Favre and transcendence).  I am thinking about this act, his joining a football team at nearly 40, through the lens of Second Half.

Yes, Brett is nearly 40.  In fact, both me and Brett turn 40 in October.  We’re the same age.  Brett’s body is beat up.  Mine is too, but only because I eat too much and smoked most of my life.  Brett plays a young man’s game.  That’s what he does, who he is.  I don’t, unless you count occasionally drinking too much beer as a young man’s game.  Thankfully, I don’t drink beer professionally, nor is it the center of my identity.  Brett’s identity is football player.  Here’s the question I’m working with: Is Brett Favre wrong — as in having an unnatural connection to youth when he is no longer youthful — to not let go of this young man’s game?  Should he go quietly into the evening and pursue his Second Half life?  Or, because he is a football player (is is a be verb), and the Vikings have a legitimate shot at being very good, is he absolutely right and perfectly awakened to his adult self to drop in and do this thing, because it will deepen who he is, which is Second Half? I’m a little confused.   But, I find Brett Favre very instructive and I will sort it out.  

Still, I don’t like this picture.

The sky is falling and I have adult B.O.

I was lucky last Wednesday night. I was hundreds of miles away from city lights—from city drama, from city big chests and city coifs and city Facebook poses and city late nights that end in city fights. And I was sitting on a dock, covered with a blanket and laying on a cushioned Depression-era chaise lounge, looking into the cloudless sky as meteors danced across the horizon like flaming Chinese dragons. (Who am I kidding? I was totally Twittering while watching this glorious dust dance.)

There weren’t nearly as many Perseid meteors as had been predicted, but it didn’t matter. I saw at least 30 shoot from all directions like Morse code messages from the gods. They had tails with tracers and heads like how sperm should actually look—like glinting, magical tadpoles instead of worms with balloon brains and a bad flu.

But that wasn’t the best part. The best part was seeing the Milky Way—this cloudy, distant system of worlds looking back at Earth and vice versa– and a moon so low and subdued it looked like a giant, translucent slice of blood orange. Also, I saw a constellation that looked exactly like Bart Simpson. He was skating away on his skateboard. Oh, and there was also a constellation of some dude blowing a giant kiss with his big, beefy lips. Do you know this guy? He seems so awesome. And super gay.

Of course, I never would have seen any of these things had I not been so intently looking, so purely in the moment, so wide-eyed that everything could pour in. And out there, in that pure moment, I noticed something else. OMYGOD, I thought. I smell…different. I have…Adult B.O!

The first time I came down with a serious case of B.O it was during sixth grade Track and Field Day. I don’t think I was even participating in it, or maybe I had signed up for a quick game of tether ball. I guess I could try to whip a ball on a string, or at least pretend to and then cower in real fear as it returned uncomfortably close to my pimpled face.

And it was on that hot, May, sixth-grade day that a super-sweet duo known as Polo shirt and O.P vest became a little tag-a-long cooker for my newly adolescent pits. I had B.O. Or “Bo Bo.” Or “Bo Bo the Monster.” And I had it bad.

But this time, out on that dock, I smelled different. Muskier. Like I worked at it. Like I had been through something. Like I was maybe dragged though the earth and was carrying its leftovers—the sun, the soil, and the ashes. And it was during this adult baptism of stars and sweat that I realized, OMYGOD, That one Moby song I wanted to dislike but couldn’t because it reminded me of Peter Schilling’s “Major Tom” is totally right: We all really are made of stars.

And I could’ve stayed there all night, watching dead stars dance back to life, surrounded by the lake and that one super-gay constellation and the moonlight and my brand-new adult B.O. Things never looked or smelled so brand-new.

–Molly

Who are you, douchebag?

I went to work at my office today and discovered this message (pictured above) written on the whiteboard in the gathering room:

Who am I? How do I know who I am? How do I know I am me? How much me am I at any give moment? (What does that even mean?)

As you might have guessed, I don’t work at a Pontiac Dealership, or Bennigan’s. I work as a writer and I office in a cross-denominational, gay-inclusive, campus-set church with a focus on peace and social justice, which is exactly where you might expect to see such questions written on a white board, so no surprise.

But surprise this: I have never attended a church service here, though I’ve been office-ing here almost every day for two months. And I am frequently asking these questions of myself.

Why don’t I go to a church service here? Perhaps it is because I still have this little compulsion to answer these types questions—spoken or written by others—like this:

Who am I? (You’re a douchebag. You’re Squeaky Fromme just as Manson got to her. You’re everything that’s wrong with the world today, including global warming.) How do I know who I am? (By checking your driver’s license. Does it say Squeaky Fromme? No? Oh. Then you’re the douchebag responsible for global warming.) How do I know I am me? (DID YOU HEAR ME?!??!?!?) How much me am I at any given moment? (Depends on your ratio of coffee-to-McDonald’s breakfast any given day, and the time of day you ask, douchebag.) What does that even mean? (It’s “scatological,” douchebag. Look it up.)

I am ashamed. Really. Here I am asking these questions of myself, but when someone else writes it down on a whiteboard in a place where you would expect people to write these things down on whiteboards, I can only mock it like a 17-year-old AP English student with an obnoxious loathing of authority who can not be earnest or vulnerable and is probably drunk on Mountain Dew and Tequila. (Dew-quila! It’s delicious!)

I don’t want to be like this anymore. Do you?

I love you (douchebag),

—Steph

Modern Adult Not About Porn

Having woken up in the middle of the night struggling with the load of responsibilities heaped upon my not insubstantial frame, I googled Modern Adult in search of help.  Nothing came up.  Nothing coherent, anyway.  I tried to access modernadult.com, but it appears to be a password-only erotica site, which is absolutely not what I’m looking for.  A google search for Modern Maturity took me to the AARP website, where our elders go to find child-like activities and pictures of blue-hairs in colorful sweatshirts, between offers for discount life and automobile insurance.  Where are the answers to my serious adult questions?   There is no one-stop shop.  I’d like to open the Super Target of Adultness (which will contain only instructions for making solutions, not the products themselves, so that we can all put to use local materials as we figure it all out).

—Geoff

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato is 16 and on the cusp of Tween Disney Superstardom.  I don’t begrudge her that.  I’d have liked to be a Disney Tween Superstar.  Why not?  I’d like to be right now.  Those cats make a lot cash.

Today, Demi Lovato was profiled in the New York Times.  Apparently she is a bit different than Mylie Cyrus and those Jonas Brothers.   She has a real edge.  She has an interesting intelligence.  She was portrayed as being sort of wise.  She said that she is constantly changing and that anybody who doesn’t change at 16 has a problem. True that, as they say.   She said, “I learn everyday.”  Good for Demi!  That’s nice.  She said, “I’ll probably be learning every day until I’m 30.”

Wait.  What happens at 30, Demi?

Again, I don’t blame Demi for anything.  Demi’s fantastic.  But, really, what happens at 30?  Do you become an adult at 30, Demi, and no longer need learning?  Demi, I was still a complete dipshit at 30.  Maybe, I think, because I was fighting to still be young and fantastic like a Tween Disney Superstar.  Hmm… I don’t know.

Now, I don’t want to be 16 at all.  I don’t even want to be 30.  I want to be almost 40, which is what I am, and I’d like to learn crap everyday, good crap.  What I don’t want to do is think about being 16 or 30 or to actually feel bad about 40 (stupid, because this is my age, like it or not, and Demi, God-willing, will also be 40 one day, and I don’t want her to think it bad).  Yes, I’m willing to feel old, because I am getting old. In fact, I get psyched about it.  Hey old man!  Is it wrong to be psyched about old?

Demi? What you think?  The NYT feels it appropriate to profile you and call you different.

—Geoff

Grownup Pop Songs

Do you know how hard it is to find grownup pop songs?

I just watched Jackson Browne talk about the song The Pretender, which I used to consider to be the Most Grownup Pop Song out there. After what he said, though, I’m not so sure. I don’t want my grownup-ed-ness to be mistaken for disillusionment.

But Paul Simon always seems to nail it. He writes undeniably grownup pop songs (and we hope to discover more of them, from other artists). Take, for instance, the refrain of The Obvious Child:

Well I’m accustomed to a smoother ride/Maybe I’m a dog that’s lost his bite/I don’t expect to be treated like a fool no more/I don’t expect to sleep the night/Some people say a lie is just a lie/But I say the cross is in the ballpark/Why deny the obvious child?

Simon isn’t rebelling against an authority, carving out an identity, or throwing anger at the loss of his youthful idealism. Instead Simon gives us—in a pretty straightforward way—his grownup habits and expectations, his disbelief in absolutes, and his belief in the spiritual practice of baseball. He owns the obvious—that he’s not a child anymore.

That is so Second Half.

—Steph

Electric Arc Radio — Silly Old Scandihoo

In some respects, The Electric Arc Radio Show caused me to question my adult cred.  I was in my mid-thirties and was writing and voicing a cartoon version of myself who was obsessed with youth and was unable to see and acknowledge his aging (while sort of lamenting the “difficulty” of being so young).  Here’s a clip from January of 2007 that perfectly demonstrates Herbach’s problem.  Makes me laugh, which is good.

“I’m so tired of being young and pretty…”

—Geoff

First Talk of Second Half!

Steph and Geoff hit Flak Radio to discuss the new idea!  As always, Flak Radio hosts Taylor and Jim do a hell of a job.

Take a listen!

—Steph and Geoff

The Second Half

“In the second half of life, humans reunite with the human race.”
—Carl Jung

Steph Wilbur Ash and Geoff Herbach are about to change American culture as we know it with their new project, The Second Half. It’s a live show, a blog, a community—it’s a movement. It’s like Scientology without all the weird stuff about aliens. It’s like psychotherapy without the billable hours, and within the semi-anonymous comfort of a group. It’s like self-help, but without all the shame of buying self-help products.

The Second Half is about being a smart, helpful, “human” human being—yes, a grownup, and it’s built on the Jungian premise that once we human beings are done with that rebellious process of becoming an individual we embark on “the second half” of our lives, which are devoted to community, spirituality, and common good.

Geoff and Steph are grownups. They have “come of age”. It was really hard.

They do not want to “come of age” again.

But they are painfully aware that as grownups they are no longer a part of American Youth Culture, which largely drives American Culture and is currently filled with hooking up, extended and painful adolescence, and the search for “self” within a contemporary, Seinfeldian meaninglessness. (Or its religious dogma opposite.)

Steph and Geoff don’t want any of that stuff. They want community, and culture, and fellowship. They want good music that speaks to their fully human selves, and movies and novels and poetry too. They want guidance, and discourse, and genuine, affirming, nonsexual hugs of comfort from family, friends, and strangers alike.

So they are on a quest to find and deliver this—grownup, second half living—living room to living room, person to person, bed to bed-and-breakfast. They want to see people reading original poetry to each other. They want to hear neighbors talking to each other about the meaning of life without evangelizing. They want to sing along to that song you wrote that is not about young love or young heartache, but rather about wonderful grownup love.

Please.

The Second Half Show

One manifestation of The Second Half movement is The Second Half Show, a live, themed variety show for those who have already “come of age” and are now interested in learning how to better live the second half of their lives.

Produced and hosted by Geoff and Steph, the show includes songs, stories, poems, and skits from the Twin Cities best grownup artists and intellectuals; original research that is entertaining and insightful and maybe a little weird; and advice from real experts who know what they’re talking about. They will provide important answers to such grownup questions as:

• How many drinks can I drink and still be a healthy human being?
• How much time should I spend with my children to be a good parent?
• How do I talk to other people about God without looking like a weirdo?
• How do I have responsible, grownup relationships with my exes?
• How do I simultaneously learn to cook and stop stuffing my face at McDonald’s?
• What exactly are the benefits of yoga, aside from the cool pants?
• What is a bed-and-breakfast stay all about, and are we really allowed to have sex there?
• Why does British Romantic Comedy feel so good?

The show is to be performed live and recorded for posterity. (That’s just the kind of thing a grownup would do, isn’t it? Consider posterity?) Like the movement itself, we hope The Second Half Show will reach people who are ready to stop coming of age and start living as a grownup.

We are out there. We are with you on this. We will help you.

Love,
Steph and Geoff