Our Last Day of the Road Trip

December 22

(Posted January 31) Even though it has now been more than a month since we arrived in New York City, I still think writing about the last day of the trip would be fun. And since we each have a significant amount of writing to do in the next couple of months for the book, keeping a regular flow might be helpful.

Two days before our arrival in New York City, the entire city had been stalled by the transit authority strike. We’d seen pictures on CNN.com and the Drudge Report of thousands of people walking over the Brooklyn Bridge and along the streets of Manhattan, so when Matt and I arrived at Grand Central Station we expected a chaotic commuter scene – but there was nothing. When we walked out to 42nd street the only cars on the streets were taxis, which meant that there was less traffic than normal. We both jumped to the conclusion that the transit strike had not actually been the big deal it was made out to be – sort of like the random gunmen in New Orleans during Katrina who somehow made it unsafe to enter. Later that day we would be proved wrong.

After a lift uptown from an enterprising cab driver, Matt and I made it to the ABC building for our 11 am meeting with the Longform (Documentary) Unit. Why we were there has a good backstory – so I’ll briefly relay it.

Down in New Orleans three weeks ago, the four of us ate dinner one night at Port of Call – one of the only local restaurants operating post Katrina. While chatting with some of the regulars and practically being forced to drink Monsoons by the bartender, Ben met a woman from New York who was working for the Longform Unit at ABC in New Orleans. Ben sparked her interest in our project, so when she told the rest of her team, they invited us to talk about it when we returned. Who knows if things would materialize from that meeting, but the route by which we found ourselves sitting in that office will always be an interesting story.

When the meeting ended, Matt and I opted for a sit down lunch rather than beginning our trek to Brooklyn to meet with 24-year old Eli Pariser, the co-founder of MoveOn.org.

After sitting in transit strike traffic for two and a half hours while racking up a $46 cab fare, I had to call Eli and tell him that we had underestimated the transit strike. Given that Eli had been one of the first interviews we’d set up back in September - as well as the last interview we’d be conducting during the road trip portion of TYAP - postponing the interview was a bit disappointing for me. (Eli’s a nice guy, so he was willing to reschedule.)

Stepping out of the cab in the heart of Chinatown, I parted ways with Matt who went to meet a friend and began my twenty three block walk uptown. It had been a cold day, but the sun was setting and there was no wind – making it possible to walk without feeling your cheeks freeze, which was nice.

It was a weird but enjoyable feeling. A lot had gone on in my life since the last time I’d walked through Manhattan, and despite the complete exhaustion from debauchery aboard the RV, I felt pretty refreshed. I didn’t feel like there was a reason to walk fast, or get anywhere for that matter. Being an ambitious Type A prone to expending myself at a whim – I savored that moment. I took in the atmosphere, observed the people moving around me, and got lost in thought.
I felt like one of those characters at the end of a movie who struts like that day is the best day ever – looking around, smiling for no apparent reason, rambling with no obvious destination. To onlookers, I must have looked like a tourist.

Even today, I’m still sort of lost in those thoughts every now and then. After three months of stimulation on many levels, it’d be foolish not to be thinking about the experience and its lasting affect on me. My selfish hope is that post-production will be as fulfilling as the trip itself has been. I know there is a lot of wisdom layered into the hours of footage we have, so I’m looking forward to revisiting the experience in the editing room and can figure out the best way to share the experience with others.

December 17th

I woke up at 8 am on the floor, under a table, at my friend Hugh’s place. It’s actually his friend’s place, but he’s been living on the couch there for about a month while playing for the Charlotte Checkers hockey team – so it’s his too. With temperatures dipping below freezing for the first time on our trip, it made sense to sleep indoors rather than on the RV. I hope it warms up a bit in our final week, but it probably won’t. Harvey will have some cold nights in the future.

Hugh had practice at 9 am, so he dropped me off downtown with the suit he needed laundered to wear to his game that night. Since my only task for the morning was to find a potential interview for later – the suit gave me a reason to explore the city in search of a same-day cleaning service.

After trying two small dry-cleaners with no luck, I walked into a ‘men’s grooming lounge’ called EmersonJoseph looking for some direction. Just as I entered, a thirtyish woman with straight blonde hair, blue eyes, and a pair of Prada dark-rimmed sunglasses approached me and began the sales pitch. Like any passionate owner, she spent the next ten minutes touring me (a potential customer) around her new facility (opened five days ago) telling the story of her new male-only salon. As it turned out, Stacy and her sister were living in New York when they realized that the booming metrosexual trend was creating a need for something more robust and male-friendly in the eyes of the sophisticated – almost ubersexual – modern man. So nearly a year after conceptualizing the grooming lounge and tricking it out to look like the ultimate batchelor’s pad/gentlemen’s club, they opened their doors to Charlotte’s growing male population who don’t mind dropping money on facials, pedicures, stretch massages, and high end tailoring (i.e. the thousands of Patrick Batemen-like investment bankers who work within a two-block radius). Charlotte itself is the third largest financial center in the US, so the supply of potential customers for EmersonJoseph is enormous.

Taking a look at my unkempt hair, she asked what I was doing in Charlotte, so I told her about TYAP and the suit errand. She then brought out Alex, a 20-year old esthetician (someone responsible for giving facials) who just started working at EmersonJoseph, and suggested her as an interview subject for the project. Having just seen the spread in the USA TODAY about the new male ubersexual trend in America along with the possibility that we’d be discussing gender relations and stereotypes at Duke University the next day– I thought Alex would make for a timely interview. Given that her profession is based around making people look and feel better, I was interested in her opinions on image, pop culture, and gender stereotypes.

To satisfy my own interest and partly to figure out whether she’d be a good person to get on camera, I decided to get a 30-minute express facial with Alex. I’ll admit that I initially felt like I was selling my soul to the metrosexual devil, but two minutes into the experience – and it was an experience - I began to relax in a way that has been impossible aboard Harvey the RV. It was like a drug and I’m now hooked. MEMO TO CRITICS: Go ahead, make fun of me for it….but try it first.

That afternoon, Matt and I returned with the camera to interview Alex next to the pool table and antique fridge stocked with cold beer. She was honest, sweet, and did very well for having an audience of five people listening to the interviewing process. At the end of the interview, we filmed Matt as Alex gave him his first ever facial. He was definitely a bit nervous about being half-naked and getting his face massaged with aloe jojoba ointment, but the awkwardness made for some priceless footage.

We left EmersonJoseph and walked to the Charlotte Arena where the Checkers were playing that night. I couldn’t help but think about the transition from the in-touch, sensual, and relaxing atmosphere of the grooming lounge to the competitive, tough-guy environment of the arena. They were opposite extremes. As I watched my friend Hugh score a goal in the overtime shootout to win the game and then be awarded one of the player of the game honors, I started thinking about the two extremes I’d seen that day – and more importantly – what type of person or attitude allowed them to coexist or even crossover. Why would a tough guy hockey fan ever get a facial? Or why would a total metrosexual enjoy the macho, in-your face atmosphere of a hockey game?

While waiting outside the locker room amongst the well-groomed ‘girlfriends’ of the other players, I began thinking about the role of athletes in setting trends in culture. David Beckham made it ok for average guys to care about their looks and actually be metrosexual while Steve Francis and Cuttino Mobley are proving it’s okay to ‘love’ another man without being gay. As Casey Cramer, the Carolina Panther we interviewed the day before said, ‘When anyone does the unexpected and decides to blaze their own path or style, I admire them. When it’s a professional athlete, I think there’s a definite impact.’ Good point Casey. Whether they like it or not athletes are definitely role models and trendsetters to their fans, and at times, those followers are an influential force. So when Hugh finally emerged from the locker room wearing the wrinkled suit I hadn’t gotten dry-cleaned that day, it donned on me that he has the potential to be one of the trendsetters in our generation. Maybe it’s the girls who drool over him as he walks down the hall, or the fans asking for his autograph, or the countless peers who’d give anything to be in his position instead of working regular jobs – but regardless, the potential for influence is tangible. I don’t want to place any more pressure on him than what already exists in the world of professional hockey, but I do hope he keeps the open-mind and curiosity of the unknown that has made him such an interesting friend for the last nine years. That’s the sort of character I’d look up to, even if I didn’t know him.

Morehouse and Mustache

December 13th

(This blog is about Saturday the 10th) The story of today really started about two weeks ago when Ben decided to write ‘For a good time call 203 – 912 – 5168’ (Matt’s number) in the grime on the back of Harvey the RV. Like ‘Wash Me’, ‘Clean Me’ and ‘Honk, I’m Reloading’ – these phrases are there for a laugh and should not be taken seriously. But today, a 24-year old named Kathy from Atlanta took Ben’s message seriously and called Matt so that they could meet up for a good time on his only night in Atlanta. They ended up meeting in the Buckhead district of Atlanta but only spent about five minutes together before mutually realizing that there would be no ‘good time’ between them. I secretly hoped there would be a great story that came out of this meeting – but there was not. That being said, I learned that people are willing to go for the random when you give them a chance, which is encouraging.

That morning, Matt and I had met up with a group of Morehouse College students for an interview before they left for Christmas Break. Since most colleges are in the middle of exam time or about to leave for the semester, we were fortunate to get them on camera. Morehouse is known for being one of the top predominantly African-American universities, with famous graduates like Martin Luther King Jr., Spike Lee, and Samuel L. Jackson. I’m not sure what the exact racial mix is for the school itself, but the group we interviewed was entirely African-American.

Their backgrounds ranged from all black high schools to predominantly white high schools or upper-middle class to near poverty, so the reasons for attending Morehouse varied. Some thought it would be a great way to surround themselves with people of their own ‘community’ and others just wanted to be in the majority rather than the minority.
I’ve noticed that many of the conversations we’ve had with minorities around the country very quickly head towards the topic of race relations whether we direct it there or not. I believe it’s a point of pride more than an animosity towards the ‘other’ side, but this conversation started the same way. Between the seven of them, cultural identity seemed to be an omnipresent factor in their lives.

(SIDENOTE: As I was writing this, Adam pulled out an enormous booger while driving and wiped it on me. I did nothing in retaliation.....except for this reference. Can you say 'passive aggressive'?)

We spoke about the connotations of ‘black’ vs. ‘African American’, the nature vs. nurture issue, and the status of the American Dream. Among other things, we spent some time discussing thefacebook.com – which seemed to be a large factor in their college experiences both for better and for worse. The facebook topic led us to a theme about the connectivity of our generation and the potential of the Internet when used properly. As a group, they seemed to view the Internet as the democratizing tool that was envisioned from the start. I’m looking forward to reviewing the tape in the editing room.

BELOW: This is the picture Matt took after the interview. Some of these guys (i.e James A. Nelson Brooks IV a.ka. 'DirtyRock' on the left) are hooked on the photo tagging feature on thefacebook.com. So you'll probably see this picture tagged very soon.

As we were leaving, one of the Morehouse guys suggested ‘Mary Mac’s Tea Room’ for lunch, so we got the chance to eat some really good southern food at one of Atlanta’s most famous restaurants. It was awesome.

That night we drove thirty miles outside the city to the house of John Walters, a Dartmouth alumni who sent us an email after reading the article in ‘The Daily Dartmouth’ about TYAP. He offered us a place to eat and shower on our way through Atlanta – so we took him up on it. Once we arrived, the other three guys made the connection that the John Walters we were staying with is the same John Walters whose name is all over the Dartmouth Lacrosse record books. He told some great stories about playing sweet lax in the Jim Brown era, but my favorite story he told centered around his involvement in the AD Fraternity that ended up being the inspiration for ‘Animal House’. It turns out the guy who wrote ‘Animal House’ was a year behind him at college, so when they released the movie John and his wife attended the premiere. Hearing him talk about the weak premiere and the slow acceptance of the cult classic made me think about all the other sleeper hits that have gone on to ‘define’ an era/feeling/culture (i.e. Donnie Darko) but were panned by the critics. I guess the critics can’t always speak for the masses.

While at the Walters’, I seized the opportunity to shave for the first time in a month. Up to that point, I’d grown a fairly robust beard that sort of made me feel like I’d been on the road for two and a half months – but when I started scaring people we tried to approach for street interviews I sensed it was time. Just before the shave, we had watched the end of the Gonzaga/Oklahoma state where Adam Morrison sunk the three-pointer to win with one second left. So partly in honor of Adam Morrison’s sicky mustache and partly in honor of my dad’s failure to realize the mustache was out of style until late 1994, I decided to rock the handle bar for my only night in Atlanta. It wasn’t quite Rolly Fingers-esque, but it was legit.

ABOVE: The Unabomber? Adam Morrison? Steve Wiggins circa 1984? Who knows....

My favorite quote from the night in reference the mustache came from a 22-year old Univ. or Georgia student. She told me, ‘You look like a child-molester…..all you need is a van with no windows.’

Nightmare and the Facebook Photo Feature

December 8th

This morning I woke up from a bad dream where the mental image of a grizzly man masterbating in front of me seemed to play itself over and over. I tried to forget it, but then I read Adam’s blog and realized that my nightmare was based on the reality of yesterday. So, if you want to read a good story about two semi-sheltered young adults hitchhiking in the Florida swamp, click here.

After reading about our adventure from Adam’s perspective, I opened an email from thefacebook.com that told me a friend had listed a picture that ‘tagged’ me using their new photo service. (Grandma and grandpa, thefacebook is a website designed for social networking between college students. You can use it to send messages, find people with similar interests, and as a procrastination tool during exams. It can also be used for stalking people you don’t know, finding people from your past so you can stalk them now, and for creating groups like ‘The Dartmouth Top 25’ that help fuel a perceived collegiate social hierarchy).

In my opinion, the photo innovation at thefacebook is the most privacy invading and stalker inducing development to date – but it’s also a great idea. They already have 75% of their users returning four times daily, so the photos now give them another reason to stay? If I were Mark Zuckerberg, my next move would be to integrate music onto the site so that I could see what my friends were listening to and then download it. Maybe even partner with iTunes? But that’s for thefacebook team to decide, I’ll just be hanging out in central Florida watching 51-year old men do weird things in public.

Okay, back to my point. I clicked on the link to the picture where I was tagged to find that it was a picture of my brother bear-hugging me. It was a good picture, not too incriminating – but it could have been and that is unsettling. Just yesterday, Charlotte Simmons had told us there is a half-naked picture of Jessica Biel listed on thefacebook as ‘Charlotte Simmons’. She had made me think about personal privacy and whether the tools we(as a generation) have at our disposal have gone too far, but then I remind myself that signing up for thefacebook is voluntary – so there is no excuse for feeling ‘invaded’ when compromising photos are uploaded and linked to your profile.

We spent the rest of our day at the beach resting and relaxing before the two-week push towards New York City. The highlight of that experience was sitting in the back seat as Ben got pulled over for driving 23 mph in a 10 mph zone on the beach. For his first speeding experience, Ben thought he was a hard guy for more than doubling the speed limit.

That night we ate dinner with Ben’s Uncle Michael and Aunt Kit in New Smyrna, FL, who aren’t actually related but have been ‘Aunt’ and ‘Uncle’ for his whole life. Both retired, they’ve spent more time traveling on America’s open roads then most people can dream of in a lifetime. He seemed to know the ‘secret spots’ in America. For example, there is a town called Davis, WV that was designed and funded by an old-money family from New York. They believed it would be the ‘next’ ritzy place to live. This never happened, so today, there are apparently beautiful Rockefellerish mansions on tree lined streets inhabited by everyday people. Sounds like an interesting place to check out.

While traveling, Mike and Kit also developed some intense conversational skills and worldly perspectives. It was intimidating in a good way and made me feel like I was eating dinner with Jon Stewarts’ family – where humor mixed with intelligence actually helped prove a point. I’ll admit that initially I thought they were the classic liberal cynics who complain about ‘America’s problems’ without proposing any sort of actual solutions, but then they turned the tables and asked us this question:

‘If the US government closed operations for three years, and you had the chance to be a benevolent dictator for that time – what would you do and change and why?’

The discussion lasted for the rest of the night and brought out sides of Adam, Ben, and Matt that I had not previously seen on this trip. Their answers reminded me why I took this trip in the first place. After all, we’re in this together.

Late Night Visitor

December 4th

This is about December 2nd. Last night I encountered a character that would have made for a great interview and probably had a bunch of stories to tell. The only issue was that he introduced himself at 3 am by knocking on Harvey’s door looking for food. We were in the parking lot next to the train station and he had just jumped off a freight train on its way to Mobile, Alabama, so to him we were the best option.

When he started knocking and saying, ‘Can I speak with the man of this house?’ – I thought it was another one of the security guards we’ve encountered along the way who doesn’t like having a 30 foot RV in their lots, but it was not. By looking through a crack between the window shades, I could see this guy was weathered, dressed in tatted clothes, and didn’t have a flashlight. With his hands in his pockets and a face lit only by the moon, I got the chills for the first time on the road.

By the second time he repeated the line, Matt and Adam had woken up – Ben kept sleeping. (Ben can sleep through anything.) So with the muscle awake, I opened the door and talked to our visitor. As it turned out, he was just waiting to catch the next freight train and was a little hungry. We gave him one of the full boxes of Carrot Cake PowerBars some nice Dartmouth girls donated to us before we left, and with that, he departed.

Then I tried to go back to bed.

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The next day we woke up and explored the city of Jackson, Mississippi. Compared to many of the places we’ve been, the downtown looks a bit rundown and may be experiencing an economic recession. Many of the shops were boarded up and the energy of the community seemed to be fading, but we did find some local flavor in the Mayflower Café. Established in 1936, this place has the southern diner feel portrayed in movies and the menu to go with it. Most everything was fried - Ben tried the catfish.

That afternoon Ben and I made our way over to the International Museum of Islamic Cultures, were we interviewed the young Muslim woman working there. She seemed to be as surprised as we were that this sort of museum was located in Jackson. We talked a lot of about the differences in the American and Arab youth cultures, the eye for an eye nature of Islamic fundamentalists, and her opinions about the war in Iraq from a Muslim-American’s perspective.

It was interesting to hear how similar, but different, this woman’s opinions were compared to the opinions of the Iraq war veteran we interviewed last week in Houston.

Cows, Cars, and Combat

December 2nd

Standard day on TYAP, a three hour drive from Austin, TX to Houston, TX ended up taking eight hours. We stopped in small towns, rural towns, and had asinine debates about situations we’ve never experienced. In Bernardo, TX, our argument centered around finding the most effective way to move a herd of cattle out of Harvey’s way without scaring them into the barbed wire. Here are the pictures:

(If I hadn’t deleted my pictures when I started to upload them– this is where they would be.)

Earlier that morning, we met Amy while she was working behind the counter at her father-in-law’s meat shop. He’s the town butcher. She had some great comments about the advantages of the small town pace of life.
In the early evening, Matt took a turn down a dirt road and found JD Sledge working on the restoration of his 1957 Chevy. Matt, Ben, and I stopped and talked to him about cars, hunting, being Texan, and happiness. At the end of our hour-long stop, Matt became extremely jealous of JD when he shared with us that he’d never sent or received an email in his life. Matt despises email and would like nothing more than to rid his life of all communication through technology. For JD, ignorance seemed to be bliss.

Once we arrived in Houston, Mike Castillo met us for dinner at the Galeria Mall downtown. Having just returned from Iraq where he was serving as a Marine, he was filled with stories and insights where the casual ‘I know what you mean’ response has no value. I felt like a wide-eyed freshmen in high school. He spoke in depth about the experience of being in a gun fight against Iraqi insurgents, or helping to bury other members of the US army, and the ‘real’ life on the ground in Iraq – it was powerful. He and Ben left to continue the profile at 24 hour fitness. Mike had been planning to workout that night, so Ben tagged along for the interview. Mike put him through a workout that Ben is still feeling in his arms(I’m three days late for this blog, so it’s been that long). All in all, it was a good profile to end a good day.

Oklahoma City Memorial

December 1st

This was not my day to blog, but here’s something brief from Oklahoma City - where we visited the memorial. Since I was 12 when the Oklahoma Bombing happened, I never really felt a connection to the event or the aftermath. Reading this piece about a girl around my age, who happened to be in the wrong place at the wrong time, sort of humanized the whole event that I’d previously only experienced through newspapers:

Cartney McCraren, 19, of Midwest City, wife of Shane McCraren; daughter of Jean Morrison of Sperth, SD and David Koch of Rapid City, SD; Airman first class, Trinker Air Force Base; married four days before bombing, she had gone to the Social Security Office to report a name change.
They met at Tinker Air Force Base in January, 1994. In the fall, he was deployed to Italy, and she, two months later, to Haiti. After e-mail, letters, and phone calls, he proposed on Valentines Day. Two weeks before the bombing, they were reunited. They wed on April 15, 2005. Their time together was spent rollerblading, preparing gourmet meals, and serving breakfast Sunday mornings to the homeless at the Salvation Army’s soup kitchen in downtown Oklahoma City.
They planned to start a family in five years if it all went well. Cartney dreamed of working with children and planned to pursue a degree in child psychology. She, like her husband, was a member of the Third Combat Communications Group. She had also been named the Squadron’s Airman of the Year.

Thanksgiving in Santa Fe

Decmber 1st

THIS IS A VIDEO BLOG!

This blog is about November 25th.

People had been asking us about our Thanksgiving plans ever since we left Maine, and until this morning, we were unsure ourselves. So before we woke up, Matt – who is the captain of the southwest section – had connected with the St. Elizabeth’s Soup Kitchen and Homeless Shelter to set us up for a day of volunteering.

On the surface this may look like a ‘look at us were so good’ move, but a large part of it was entirely selfish. We’d been on the road for two months without family, in close quarters, and have had only a handful of home cooked meals – so the opportunity to spend time at a soup kitchen where everyone is searching for a ‘family’ on the holidays was a good fit. It also gave us the chance to play some pickup football and watch the NFL games with some real characters. And these are not characters in the fictional sense, but more so in the ‘I can’t believe that story you just told me actually happened in your life’ type of characters.

I spoke to my brother that morning and he reminded me of the times when my parents would take us down to the nearby Good Shepherd Soup Kitchen to work the Thanksgiving and Christmas Day meals. It became a family tradition that always sparked good stories and experience, so getting back to that in Santa Fe would feel good.

We arrived and went directly to the kitchen, where we met a 6’4” black guy with a larger than life personality and a commanding authority over the cooking duties. Like most social situations, he seemed to have been put in charge simply because he took the initiative and no one challenged him. I soon found out he’d also attended the Culinary Institute of America (CIA) and used to run a restaurant in a town next to my hometown. Small world. He made a quick witted remark about what he needed done and how we wouldn’t really be able to do it – and with that, we began helping in the preparation of the meal.

A minute later, I started to realize we weren’t the only people who’d thought volunteering at St. Elizabeth’s would be a good way to spend Thanksgiving – so I left the overstaffed kitchen and ventured out into the parking lot where a crowd of homeless was gathering. Apparently, Thanksgiving dinner at St. Elizabeth’s is a big deal.

I decided to take a walk down the block both to wake up and to see this area of Sante Fe – which like the rest of Sante Fe - adhered to the Adobe-style architectural guidelines. Turning the corner behind an abandoned auto parts store, I found myself about ten yards away from a Hispanic man and woman who were sitting on a tattered queen size mattress. The man, about 35, had a black eye and a bloodshot left eye. His scraggly brown hair was matted down by a stocking cap that was the same color of his canvas jacket and gloves. The woman, about the same age, had a wrinkly face and glazed over blue eyes. They both smelled of booze and had been laughing when I walked around the corner. They were houseless. (As I learned later, some homeless refer to themselves as ‘houseless’, not ‘homeless’.)

‘Are you waiting for Thanksgiving dinner?’

Surprised at the question, I was speechless. It had been directed at me and seemed to be genuine. On the surface, the question was obvious, but for me, the subtext was the most interesting. From what I could gather, this houseless man was asking me if I too were houseless, and therefore, waiting to eat at St. Elizabeth’s. Having never been close to houseless in my entire life, I tried to envision myself from his eyes – and his comment began to make sense. With a two month dirty beard, greasy bed-head, and a naturally ‘please feed me’ physique – I could have maybe been mistaken for houseless, (or even trendy depending on what fashion magazine you read). When I looked at my clothing - unwashed jeans and a very faded tie-dye shirt – I realized there was a legitimate chance he thought I was houseless. So I answered him ambiguously.

‘Yes’.

‘Well then come join us…..It’s Thanksgiving!’ He motioned to an uninhabited portion of the mattress - I followed his lead. We entered into a friendly conversation from the moment I was seated. We rambled on about family, the mercurial life on the street, the inefficiencies of the welfare system and the potency of Steel Reserve. As ‘two to three a day beer drinkers’, both Robert and his girlfriend Donna preferred the high alcohol content of Steel Reserve that would help maintain a buzz. I told them they should try the highly potent Hurricane, which Adam has developed a taste for out on the road. It’s sort of like beer on steroids.

I think we were both enjoying each other’s company, so when I told them a little about TYAP, Robert responded by saying, ‘You should film us, the houseless need documentaries to be made too. And when my neighbor Robert Jones gets back, you should interview him – he’s got stories.’ I ran back to the RV and grabbed the handheld. So rather than describing my experience for those next fifteen minutes, I’m going to try my first ever ‘video blog’. It’s a seven minute fairly unedited clip, but it’s worth the download time and will tell the story of Robert Jones much better than I could with my words. (Video will be uploaded shortly. )

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When I returned back to the RV to put away the camera after my time with Robert and the rest of the houseless group, I walked right into a football game between Ben, Adam, Matt, and a 45-year old houseless man who was an impressive athlete. On one play, he burned Adam on his way to catching a deep pass. Seeing the touch football game in progress reminded me of Thanksgiving’s I’ve had in the past at my Uncle Jim and Aunt Maggie’s house – where a game of touch football amongst the cousins is a given. Only this year, the members of my family playing are not blood-related.

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After serving for most of the morning we started the eight hour drive to Oklahoma City, but before leaving New Mexico we searched and found a pristine desert lake that had been described to us by one of the members of the St. Elizabeth’s shelter. We arrived just as the clouds were turning pink and the desert was cooling down for the night. I filmed all the guys as they jumped in and realized it was a freezing cold lake. Good times.

Where was my Mormon missionary?

November 24th

Until yesterday, I’d never actually heard the Mormon (Latter Day Saints) ‘pitch’ from one of their missionaries. The rumors of polygamy, God-fearing church members, and two year missions for the young men/women had made there way to my social circles – but like most rumors, I had not experienced the full truth. So our stop in Provo, UT became an opportunity to see what’s accurate behind that cultural stereotype.

Compared to most religions, the Mormon tradition is very young. It’s only been around for about 150 years, but somehow, it’s the ‘fastest growing religion’ in America. I have my thoughts on why that’s the case, but the unofficial TYAP ‘blog’ rules require me to explain the day before running off on tangents.

We arrived in Provo late at night and were greeted by Matt’s family friend Mary Ann, an overly hospitable and attractive 23-year old Mormon. Most of her friends had gone home for Thanksgiving, so the four of us scored comfortable beds and left Harvey out in the cold for the night. Over a quick meal, we began a discussion about the Mormon tradition. To help explain the Mormon cultural nuances, Mary Ann invited her friend Lindsay(our interview subject for the next day) over to hang out. This is Lindsay:

You can also find her here as the face for the ‘I Can’t I’m Mormon’ clothing line. It's a big deal on the Mormon scene.

For the next hour and a half, we all discussed the Mormon tradition as it relates to our generation and to us. It’s difficult to do the conversation justice, but here are some comments/observations that some people reading this might find interesting…..
NOTE: This is what I learned about Mormon life from the people I met. These observations may not be true for all Mormons. So if you’re a Mormon reading this and getting angry at me, please don’t shoot the messenger.
1. Provo is a ‘city of virgins (both male and female) with raging hormones’. It’s the hub of Mormon culture and serves as a meeting place for a majority of Mormon couples. A lot of Mormons stay in Provo until they find a partner and then they leave. ‘It’s like speed dating.’
2. BYU and Provo are the places all Mormons know to come when looking for the best marriage partners. Being surrounded by other people with the same intentions makes it easier to settle down with the ‘right’ person. ‘In Provo, pretty girls are a dime a dozen. The competition for good partners can get pretty cutthroat.’
3. Mormons do not have premarital sex, take drugs, or drink alcohol. As a result, the city of Provo has one bar and the only time it’s packed is on karaoke night when the Mormons go there and binge on Red Bull and other energy drinks. Anyone caught drinking is frowned upon.
4. ‘Sure, we think about what sex might be like – but having never been exposed to it makes it a lot easier to save for marriage.’
5. A college party at BYU is like a party at any other college – only without any of the drinking, drugs, or hooking up. They listen to music, gossip, and actually have real conversations.
6. Overall, Mormon’s are very god-fearing and Republican.
7. Since they don’t spend any time drinking, being hungover, or dealing with the social pressures of sex – they can spend all day working out at the gym. And they do. ‘We’re only in Provo for a few years, so everyone wants to look as good as possible when everyone else is in the hunt. The gym is one of the most social places in Provo’ One of the girls we talked with had been courted by 150 Mormon guys.
8. A ‘NCMO’ is the Mormon version of a one night stand. It stands for ‘Non-committal make-out’. Translated: A kiss.
9. ‘We believe in marriage for life and eternity, so finding a guy who’s future looks bright and would make a good father is something we think about all the time. We won’t date anyone just for fun.’ Translated: Since we can’t have premarital sex, we don’t look for a buddy who can give us pleasure. We look for someone who can give us pleasure and provide for us for the rest of our lives. ‘There’s a little bit of gold digging.’
10. ‘Mormons aren’t necessarily more mature than other people our age – they’re just more grounded. We realize temptation is a slippery slope that’s best avoided.’
11. ‘I know it sounds lame, but it’s the truth. All I want in life is to have a great family, great kids, and an enriching marriage that will last for the rest of my life. That’s all I need to be happy.’ Translated: I’m perfect, pick me.

That night, I went to bed thinking about the Mormon faith and how my religious premises had been checked in the last few hours. Were these girls onto something? Is being Mormon the new new thing? Why is it the fastest growing religion? What would my life be life if I’d been Mormon? Could Provo really be a church created community serving as a breeding ground for beautiful people?

The next morning Matt and I went with Mary Ann and Lindsay to the ‘singles’ ward at BYU, where we experienced our first Mormon service. It’s labeled a singles ward because it’s a nice way of saying it’s a Mormon meat market created by the church itself to encourage inter-faith relationships. Surrounded by beautiful young men and women, genetically enhanced from generations of Mormon pure breeding – I felt completely inadequate. I pinched my developing love handles, felt my dirty beard, and thought about my impure (in the Mormon sense) past. To be honest, it was a little depressing – but a positive depressing, like the kind that makes you want to change for the good.

The service itself was fairly boring, with an older man in a business suit spending 95% of the time lecturing about genealogy and the new website he created to track it, but there was a 22-year old guy who got up and spoke off-the-cuff about the satisfying feeling of being devoted to a religion enough to achieve a level of personal comfort that extends beyond the physical realm. He articulated it well and made a convincing case on the benefits of commitment to the LDS tradition, but I couldn’t help thinking about all the life changing (and enhancing) experiences I would have missed growing up Mormon. As with most people, I have a hard time when people preach to me without the ‘life’ credibility or broad understanding to back it up. It just seems false. Sort of Like an opinionated activist who has never learned about the other side.

Besides, our hostesses even said that the ‘most respectable and appealing’ Mormons are the ones who convert later in life after they’ve arrived at the personal gnosis that attracts them to the LDS tradition. Even if they do have a shaky past in terms of the standard Mormon ideals, they are embraced like long lost family returning from a sabbatical.

So where was my Mormon missionary? I didn’t have one. Following Mormon tradition, a young male or female should have found me already and enlightened me on the LDS lifestyle – but nobody knocked on my door. I’m pretty open-minded and would have liked to know all of the options out there. In my opinion, religion should be like a large buffet with various options and samplings for any person interested in taking a bite. Some people may like a more substantial meal, some people may just want the salad – and that’s fine. I just may have liked having all the options available when I was filling my plate. Would I have chosen the Mormon LDS stop on the buffet had it been there? Probably not, but it would have been nice to know the story from the perspective of one of my Mormon age peers – and not from second hand opinion. Maybe it’s the fact that I’m at Boston College, a place with a religious undertone that may have discouraged the Mormon missionary to walk through the freshmen dorms.

Now, with all things considered, why is the Mormon tradition the fastest growing religion? It’s a good question that probably has a variety of possible answers that I don’t know and wouldn’t understand. But everyone has their opinions, and so do I. From my point-of-view as a 22-year old traveling around the country listening to the thoughts and opinions of my peers around the country, I can understand the expansion of the Mormon population – in the same way I can understand the growing popularity of the questionable side of Las Vegas. They both represent extremes that appeal to members of the center who are in question of how well the ‘middle’ is working for them. So, as the present day influences of pop culture, the internet, and increasing peer pressure are introduced to impressionable young Americans – some may feel that the only choices they have are to side with the extremes. By developing a community based around the values many people look for (chastity, commitment, avoidance of alcohol/drugs), the Mormon religion seems to have created an option for a ‘pure life’ – only with an enormous religious component thrown into the mix. It may be a bit extreme, but that might be what people are looking for at a time when everything else in their life is ‘unpure’, or more likely, everything around them seems to becoming ‘unpure’.

Personally, it was a very thought-provoking 24 hours in Provo – and probably even more so for Matt. The experience forced me to look inward more than I may have wanted to, and question my own life ‘plan’. With everyone around me talking about getting married at 21 and 22, how could I not?

The Small World of Filmmaking and Friendly Inspiration

November 18th

I woke up around 7 am, making it my earliest morning since Acadia. The only difference was that I had to wake up early to wade through the LA morning traffic on the way from Beverly Hills to Santa Monica for a 9 am interview. Although it’s only about twelve miles, the traffic makes sure it takes at the full two hours.

Trading the traffic for an early morning interview turned out to be a good move. I met with Jason Peterson on the top of the sand bluffs overlooking the Santa Monica beaches. Jason recently graduated from the USC film school and is the youngest filmmaker (at 19) to submit and be accepted at the Sundance Film Festival for his movie ‘The Beat’, so interviewing him with the Pacific Ocean and view down the Santa Monica beach seemed fitting. After all, it’s the entertainment business.

At 24, Jason is an emerging player in the independent film world and appears to have the visionary gift of knowing how influential factors (internet, digital revolution, China/India) will affect the future of the industry. His ultimate goal is become part of a studio that can leverage their resources with his ideas, but for now he’s content attending Pepperdine Law school in his free time so he can ‘legally’ be in the position of movie producer. That being said, he’s already produced five movies.

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After the interview I met up with Jessie Draper, an old friend in her senior year at UCLA, for a late breakfast on the outskirts of Beverly Hills. We caught up for a while then talked about our mutual interest in movie production, growing up, and dating in America. (Asking questions all the time for the project has made it hard for me to talk about ‘normal’ things.) It was an enjoyable conversation, but that’s not why I’m writing about it in this blog. I’m writing because it was one of those small world experiences worth writing about. The previous night I had gone out in Santa Monica with my friend Austin who plays in The Hatch, where I met his friend Matty. Coincidentally, her (Matty’s) older ‘sister’ in the sorority was Jessie Draper – who I was eating breakfast with the next day. To take this small world notion further, I had found Jessie using the facebook.com search capability - a utility I had at my disposal thanks to Mark Zuckerberg, who I interviewed last week for TYAP.
Was this an odd coincidence? 99% of the time I would answer yes, but life on the road has forced me to check my own premises and have faith in the random nature of life. There are a lot of times where I just can’t seem to understand how a chain of events leads me to a certain moment, situation, or thought – which I guess is a good thing for me. As I reminded myself in the first blog, when you over plan anything you squander the opportunity to let the real magic happen. I think that’s been a good lesson to learn while traveling across America.

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Later that afternoon, we spent about five hours wading through LA rush hour traffic on our way down to San Diego. At that point, I came to the conclusion that I would never move to LA. I figured that if I ever lived their I’d probably have to commute for at least two hours a day. So, if I moved there at 25 and worked every week day until I turned 55, I’d spend close to two years (610 days) sitting in traffic. No thanks. Just think, if I were Britney Spears – I could have about 50 marriages in the time I would have spent sitting in traffic.

In the end, the drive to San Diego was worth every minute. While Adam and Ben met up with their friends Vik and Justin, Matt and I drove down to Coronado to interview my friend Dave Dauphinais. For the most part, we’ve been against interviewing friends for this project – but Dave was too good to pass up. Beyond the fact he’s a great guy with a good collegiate coming of age story, he’s currently a student in the Special Warfare division of the Navy and is in training to become a SEAL. Since Matt is writing a profile on him I won’t divulge anything else, but I’ll admit I felt extremely out of shape and underachieving next to him. He’s chiseled, focused, and living out the dream he developed as a six-year old.

For the last question of the interview, we asked him to look straight into the camera and say whatever he wanted to America. Here’s what he said: Based on the experiences that I've had, there is absolutely nothing holding us back. Wherever you come from and no matter what you look like, as long as your doing something that makes you happy - you are a successful person. At the same time, there is no excuse for wasting talent. To the youth of America, I'd say - don't waste your talents.'

As he finished, I realized I’d learned more about the ‘real’ Dave in one hour than I had in the past four years of our friendship. He spoke candidly about his motivations, his major life decisions, and his take on the college experience we shared. But more than anything else, he was inspiring. It made me think about what it would be like if I sat down all my friends and asked these questions, but more so, it made me thankful I’d again broken the no-friend rule for the project.

The Mozilla Firefox Interview

November 17th

(This is just a free write about a day I spent on my own)

On Sunday, while the guys traveled down the famously beautiful Pacific Coast Highway, I stayed behind in Mountain View for an interview with Blake Ross, the co-creator of Mozilla Firefox. The open-sourced internet browser he created has been downloaded over 100 million times and is posing the first legitimate threat to Microsoft’s Internet Explorer. At 21, I think he’ll become one of the more notable figures in our generation.

SIDENOTE: Open-sourced means that all the coding(what makes it work) for the browser has the potential to be viewed and improved by programmers anywhere in the world with internet access. Conceptually, it’s brilliant. By creating an online meritocracy, the most valuable programmers rise to the top and receive peer acclaim. In return, the Mozilla project gets an entire online community focused on making it’s browser efficient and ‘pop-up’ free. Essentially, it’s like having 50,000 highly talented employees – for free. The origins of the ‘source code’ Blake began working on came from Netscape, which released their code to the online world when Microsoft started winning what were referred to as the ‘browser wars’ in 1998. Right around that time, Blake started networking in online chat rooms with other programmers about forming a more simplified internet browser that would make it easy for ‘even his grandparents’ to surf the web. After seven years of hard work, he released Firefox to nearly a million downloads in the first day. Since then he’s sort of become the Lebron James of the internet. (Wigs. Is that another one of your outrageous claims you make all the time? No, it’s not. Blake is compared to Bill Gates all the time the same way Lebron is compared to Michael Jordan.) If you’re interested, you can read more about the open-source movement or download Firefox here.

It was planned that Blake and I would meet at 1 pm at the Performing Arts Center downtown before his 2:15 meeting. Being me I waited until 12:58 to test the video camera I’d be using for the interview, so I realized it was malfunctioning about a minute before Blake arrived. The next few minutes went by very slowly as I thought about the options. Harvey, the guys, and the other camera were already making their way down the coast – so I needed to find an alternative or cancel the interview.

Blake arrived as I was on the phone getting directory assistance to the nearest camera shop. It must have been obvious that this was the case.

‘Camera troubles?’ he said.

I explained the situation and he offered a ride to Wolff Camera Shop in Mountain View. Within twenty minutes I had found a small camera with a nice ten day return policy and we began the interview in the corner of the camera shop. It was guerilla documentary filmmaking at it’s finest. We positioned Blake in front of a series of picture frames complete with the fake overly-happy family pictures used to help sell those frames. As I was setting up the camera, Blake took the chance to create stories for his new ‘family’ that would serve as the backdrop for his interview. It was funny.

During the interview, there were shoppers who would walk by and look quizzically at the interview going on in the middle of the store, but they were not distractions, they just added to the environment - and the story. The interview turned out to be great, as Blake honestly shared his thoughts about Firefox, himself, his community, and America. Having already accomplished something impressive at a young age, it seemed easier for him to be honest about his feelings on himself and the people in his world. It was refreshing.

ABOVE and BELOW:: This is me interviewing Blake Ross, co-creator of Mozilla Firefox. We are in the corner of the Wolff Camera Shop in Mountain View.

After the interview we talked for a few minutes about our respective projects and the future. It was interesting to realize that despite his background and personal success, he’s not that different from many of the people we’ve interviewed. At 21, he’s asking the same questions, experiencing similar life situations, and trying to strike the right balance between work and play that most of us are on a daily basis. Who knows, maybe even Lebron James is similar.

At 2:13, Blake left and I walked across the street to the Togo’s for a bite to eat. Midway through a turkey avocado sandwich, I found myself in a conversation with a young couple (Pache and Chanel). Pache, was from San Sebastian, Spain and his girlfriend Chanel was from Latin America. They gave me a lift to a good hitchhiking spot, so 12 hours and one Greyhound bus ride later I made it to LA to meet up with the guys. I guess missing the ride along the coast on the PCH gives me a reason to make it back to California in the near future. Not such a bad incentive.

Another good day in America.

Thinking Different with Steve Jobs

November 17th

Last week we had the chance to meet with some of the marketing and creative people at Apple. Matt already covered this in his blog and it’s not really my day to write, but I had an individual experience I wanted to write about – so I’m going to. Apple’s made a huge comeback in the last five to seven years – and in my mind – has played a pretty large role in pushing the creative revolution with their digital technology, so meeting with them didn’t really make me think we were becoming corporate sycophants (like those kids in that soft-drink commercial.)

In the meeting itself, we were introduced to the guy who wrote the famous ‘Think Different’ ad campaign. Had he not been identified by the other Apple people, we would have had no idea – he’s just that type of guy. Since what he wrote is more of a manifesto to creativity and original entrepreneurship than an ad campaign, I’m going to copy it below. It’s pretty inspiring:

Here’s to the crazy ones.
The misfits.
The rebels.
The troublemakers.
The round pegs in the square holes.
The ones who see things differently. They’re not fond of rules.
And they have no respect for the status quo. You can praise them, disagree with them, quote them,
disbelieve them, glorify or vilify them.
About the only thing you can’t do is ignore them.
Because they change things.

They invent. They imagine. They heal.
They explore. They create. They inspire.
They push the human race forward.
Maybe they have to be crazy.
How else can you stare at an empty canvas and see a work of art?
Or sit in silence and hear a song that’s never been written?
Or gaze at a red planet and see a laboratory on wheels?
We make tools for these kinds of people.

While some see them as the crazy ones,
we see genius.
Because the people who are crazy enough to think
they can change the world, are the ones who do.
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Before the meeting, Ben and I had found the wrong Apple lobby and were waiting around the sign-in desk. Out of nowhere, Steve Jobs walked down the stairs and right up to me. He extended his hand and said, ‘Hey Wigs, I’ve been following your travels around the country – great project!’ He then turned to Ben and said, ‘Hey big jock dude, why don’t you lose 100 pounds to look more like Wigs?’

KIDDING…….. Steve Jobs didn’t really say anything to us in the lobby of Apple. As he walked by us on his way home for the day, the only thing we exchanged was a mutual head nod. Ben described this moment best as ‘Wigs shitting the bed’. If I’d had the presence of mind to say anything to him, it would have been something like this, ‘Hey man, great speech at the Stanford Graduation. I read it at the perfect time as I was deciding whether to take the semester off of college to be a part of a project with some friends. I agree with you that the random magic of life is something that shouldn’t be limited the confines of one predetermined path – and that making sure there are dots to connect later in your life is maybe even more important than knowing why you’re creating those dots in the first place. Thanks for being so honest about your perspective changing personal health experiences, it helped make sense of my own experiences and ambitions. Oh, and what do you think our generation should be named? Alright man, thanks for stopping and talking to me. I’ve got to bounce or else I’m going to get beaten by that armed security guard approaching over my left shoulder.’

The USC vs. Cal Rivalry

November 17th

(This blog is about Nov. 10th) Kale, Matt’s cousin, took us on Saturday morning to the USC/CAL football game over at Berkeley. It’s a huge rivalry, so getting the chance to partake was interesting. We ditched Harvey for the day in place of a tan minivan – which gave us the under the radar soccer mom look rather than the overt we’re filming a documentary about our generation look. The mobility let us get all the way to the SAE fraternity house near the stadium, where the kind brothers let us park for $60.

After a few hours of hanging out on frat row, we walked into the stadium and into the Cal student section. Being outsiders, we sort of thought this would be a good place to get the vibe of a school on a big game day –especially since the last USC loss was at the hands of Cal at the Berkeley Stadium.

We were wrong.

Matt Leinert, Reggie Bush, and the rest of USC spent most of the first half dominating the Cal defense and opening up a 21-3 halftime lead. By the start of the third, the entire Cal student section spent more time yelling at their own quarterback then they did cheering on the team. We agreed that he probably didn’t deserve a lot of the heckling, but when compared for an entire game against a Heisman Trophy winning quarterback like Matt Leinert from USC – it’s hard to be average without looking bad.

Having no ties to either team combined with the lack of sleep from the night before, Adam, Ben and I left the game at the start of the fourth and returned to our minivan in the parking lot of the SAE fraternity. Thanks to the street hustling SAE pledges in charge of parking, the minivan was situated at the back of the lot with about twenty cars in front of the exit. Exhausted, we crawled inside the minivan and slept Harvey style until the parking lot cleared.

That night, the overly generous Turner’s (Kale’s family) had another dinner waiting for us when we returned home. We celebrated the 25th birthday of Matt’s brother Zach, who has been living the life out in San Francisco for the past year. I should also mention that Zach and his friend are now part of the TYAP street team, check out this picture:

Habitat for Humanity

November 14th

(This blog is about Nov 6th....yes, I'm late) Habitat for Humanity is the perfect community service activity for us. Beyond the selfless feel good about yourself side of it, Habitat offers us the opportunity for distraction. At times, there is a lot of latent aggression aboard Harvey the RV, so redirecting that aggression towards building houses for humanity rather than fist fights is probably a good thing. I can’t promise that Matt, Adam, and Ben aren’t thinking about me every time they rip a 2x4 from the wall or pound a nail with a hammer – but ignorance is bliss.
In some sort of random association, my time working at Habitat reminded me of the ‘holding time’ sessions my mom would subject my brother and I too when we were younger. I remember being brought to a room with other 8-11 year olds and then being pinned down by my mom as the class instructor would say, ‘Okay, now tell them how much you love them and ask them to release their angries’. It may have been the discomfort of being trapped under the weight of your own mom or the fear of being at the whim of a Tony Perkins-like cult leader, but inevitably, the entire room would be filled with screaming kids and satisfied mothers. Ironically, this was usually followed by a bonding session that made the whole experience worth it. I don’t know whether it’s hippie parenting or a Gen X parenting trend I have to credit for those experiences, but they always achieved the desired results.

A day at Habitat for Humanity seems to have the same cathartic effect for the TYAP crew that holding time had for me and my brother. Maybe it’s the chance for physical exertion beyond the writing and filming we normally do, or maybe it’s the satisfaction of completing a project that feels good – but it’s an ideal activity that usually comes at a perfect time.

See, look at how well we get along after a day at Habitat:

BELOW: A picture is worth a thousand words.

BELOW: He's not only the founder, he's also a client.

BELOW: This are the two houses we were working on our day in Redding, CA.

As a side, all the Habitat site leaders we’ve met have been awesome. The retired small town surgeon in Atchison, KS, Steve from Jackson, WY, and Dave from Redding, CA each displayed an amazing enthusiasm for what they’re doing. Maybe it’s that we’re ‘not convicts forced to volunteer’ (as Steve said) or that we’ve been lucky up to this point. But we like it.

As I promised him, here is some face time for Dave on the TYAP website:

Random Facts

November 8

This morning I woke up to the sweet sound of victory and tasty German pancakes. The German pancakes were being made by our host Brian Hebb, while the sweet sound of victory was provided by his wife Demian. While nursing their 1-year old son Finn, Demian weighed in with her celebrity knowledge on the $20 bet I’d made with Matt the previous night. Her opinion combined with a Google search sealed the deal: Ted Danson and Whoopi Goldberg had in fact been dating at one point in their lives – and I was correct. Is this really an important fact in the world – not at all – but for a span of fifteen hours it meant a lot to my random fact credibility amongst the TYAP crew.

It’s good to be back.

We spent the rest of the day traveling from Cottage Grove, OR to Portland for a meeting with the creative agency Wieden and Kennedy that afternoon. I’d write more about the day and that meeting, but I ended up spending the rest of the day asleep in the back of the RV. It was the best I could do to fight off sickness on the road.

Being sick on the RV was a hassle, but when I remembered what Christopher Gordon had told me the previous day about dealing with the HIV virus – I sort of stopped feeling sorry for myself. I guess sickness is all relative.

More in a few days.

Where The Truth Lies

November 6th

(This blog is actually about Monday October 31st) It’s raining in Seattle, which according to my friends Tom and Price here at UW, is not uncommon. Summer is short and the constant drizzle takes up most of the year – so rainy days are normal in the Pacific Northwest. Unable to film outside, I spent most of the day in Tully’s coffee shop with Matt and Adam catching up on the little stuff.
We left Tully’s around 6 for the UW athletic facility where Ellen’s (a friend of Adam’s girlfriend Renee) boyfriend Scott and his friend Dimitry rounded out a team for some pickup basketball. At 6’6”, Scott added a dimension to our team rarely seen in pickup – a guy who could dunk. I was pumped. Once the game started, I realized having a guy who to dunk meant nothing when the other team had two quick point guards capable of dominating from anywhere. They were like the Allen Iverson’s of pickup. After losing two straight games, we moved to the court for B and C level players. Although there is not really a sign or written rule saying one court is skillwise better than the other, it’s just an understood and unspoken classification system that is the same all around the country. It sort of reminds me of the tables in college cafeterias, where out of habit or culture, people find themselves eating with the same people at the same tables everyday. Actually, it’s completely different? On the basketball court people’s skills determine which court they should be playing on, but what determines where people sit in a cafeteria? Is it physical or cultural?

That night while Matt took Harvey to the airport to pick up Ben from Hawaii, Adam and I stayed behind. Adam went to a coffee shop to write and I took the video camera out for some impromptu interviews. It’s worked well in the past, so I figured Halloween would be a perfect time to get people in their element. Besides, I think there’s something about wearing costumes that lowers people’s inhibitions, so they’ll do or say what they really want. Maybe they’re a natural intoxicant.
I’d only asked a few brief questions when a brunette with a curious smile and the hipster look asked me why I was filming on Halloween. I gave her the one sentence description of TYAP and it led to a discussion of movies. As it turned out, she was a film student on her way to watch Atom Egoyan’s Where The Truth Lies for a class assignment, which is an indie mystery starring Kevin Bacon and Colin Firth. It’d been selected for Sundance and I had wanted to see it, so we decided to go together.

We entered the theater and saw only one other ‘couple’ in an otherwise empty theater, which made it easy to continue the get-to-know-you ritual during the opening credits. Had I known exactly what the movies was about I might have diffused the inevitable awkward moments that would follow, but I didn’t – so I just dealt with it. For anyone who hasn’t seen the movie, it’s a murder mystery about Hollywood stars back in the 50’s, who are accused of murdering a college girl after a one night stand. On the surface, it may not sound too different from the standard Hollywood mystery, but when the director decides to preserve the ‘artistic integrity’ by leaving the ‘excessive sexual thrusting’ and ‘girl-on-girl’ action – the NC-17 rating seems tame. So for me, as I sat in a nearly empty theater with my new film buddy in the seat next to me, I watched the sex scenes feeling like a middle schooler out on a first date - trying to determine whether hand-holding would be a good first move. I was hopeless, so I ended up laughing hysterically – which is pretty much what happens to me in most extremely awkward settings.

After the discomfort of the 98 minute quasi-porno came to a close, I met up with Harvey and the guys. That’s also when I met our first overnight guest in the RV, Brody Merrill, who was catching a ride from Seattle to Portland. After graduating from Georgetown in the spring, Brody had been picked up by the Portland Lumberjax as the #1 pick in the National Lacrosse League entry draft. So he’d packed his bags and was moving to Portland to follow a dream. Combining the fact that he’s sort of the Lebron James of lacrosse for his year(yes, I want his autograph) and that lacrosse is growing rapidly around the country – the idea of being a full time professional lacrosse player may become an option for people like Brody in the near future. I guess we’ll see. For now, his status as the first overnight guest on Harvey the RV is a baby step in the right direction.

Our Day at Nike

October 27th

This morning we dropped Ben off for his flight to Honolulu, where he’ll be attempting to interview a native Hawaiian and simultaneously play in a professional lacrosse tournament. To document the sendoff I grabbed the camera and followed him. As he passed through the glass revolving doors into the airport, I followed with the camera to capture his brief departure from the continental US, Harvey, and the rest of us. We were losing an integral part of the TYAP crew to a far away cluster of islands doubling as a US state, so it was a sentimental moment. Or at least it was up until Ben decided to get anti-paparazzi pro-athlete on me and pushed the camera away with lines like, ‘Wigs, I don’t want to get strip searched or arrested’. It was like Laguna Beach – only it was real, unscripted, and had a much more interesting character, Ben. Great footage.
So anyway, he’ll probably get leied the minute he gets to Hawaii and forget his duties to the TYAP crew, but either way, he’ll be capturing the elusive 49th state for this project. Nice job Ben, and good luck with the sweet lax!

(*For my friends who thought that was a sexual reference, it’s actually a nod to the Hawaiian tradition of the flower necklace (aka. ‘lei’). Most tourists get them at the airport.)

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Given the nature of ‘The Young Americans Project’, the insights being gathered about our generation and the potential for grassroots guerilla marketing – some people whose businesses center around youth trends and consumer cultures have started to take notice, which is cool.
In this case it was Nike, a company synonymous with youth around the world. Their corporate ‘campus’ also happens to be in Beaverton, OR, so on Thursday Matt, Adam and I wore our most trend consultantish clothing and arrived at the Tiger Woods Conference center to have a roundtable discussion about American youth with Nike’s designers, trend researchers, college marketing team, and consumer cultures people. It was awesome, but before we did that, they treated us to a tour of the Nike campus. Here are some of the photos I took with my own camera (Matt should have much better pictures up on a slideshow soon). And yes, I'm copying Adam's idea of putting a personal slideshow in a blog. It's a good idea, so I have no shame.

ABOVE: This is a self-pic in front of Tiger Woods' famous red Nike shirt from Day 4 of the Masters.

BELOW: I caught Adam staring at the other half of the nude Tiger photo shoot. Check out the amateur flash reflection on both pics.

ABOVE LEFT AND RIGHT: This is a sculpture of Nolan Ryan created out of all the crap in Nolan Ryan's garage. It's the most impressive piece of art at the Nike campus. Thanks to my lack of Macromedia Fireworks experience, the distorationputs Adam less than six inches from Nolan Ryan's used cup. That guy in the background was our tour guide. He's actually about 6'8".

ABOVE: This is the entrance to Nike. It's hard to see, but the waterfalls are near the entrance are all of Asian design. Directly behind me was the welcome building devoted to Steve Prefontaine, the University of Oregon runner who wore some of the first shoes created by Bill Bowerman.

BELOW: Steve 'Pre' Prefontaine's running shirt from back in the day.

ABOVE: This is my favorite picture. It's of an exhibit in the Lance Armstrong building devoted to Lance's perseverance and struggles with cancer.

BELOW: One of the yellow jersey's Lance earned while cycling and winning the Tour De France after dealing with cancer. What a badass.

Despite my preconceived notions about the Nike facility and culture after watching Cameron Crowe’s Elizabethtown last week, the actual Nike Campus has a very well-funded collegiate feel and is filled with symbolism of its origins and development. The entrance – as well as the bamboo gardens next to the manmade lake – are representative of the early Asian investment at Nike, which fueled the company to success in its infancy, when Phil Knight could find no American investors to keep the company afloat. The Lance Armstrong fitness center, the Jerry Rice building, the Michael Jordan design center, and the Mia Hamm building have all been dedicated to the Nike ‘lifers’ over the years. According to our tour guide, the dedications of each building are events in themselves. Lance apparently brought everyone to tears with his speech while Tiger took a ceremonial drive from the tee box (which is a replica of the 18th at Pebble Beach) next to the Tiger Woods Conference center and landed it nearly 400 yards away on a small green set up next to the Lance building. We walked the distance, it’s impressive.

I realized that if I ever wanted to get into shape or surround myself with people who’ve spent their entire lives working out – I’d get a job at Nike. They have Olympic quality facilities (some employees are former Olympians) and a fitness center that makes Equinox look cheap.

After the tour, we were taken to a section of the Nike campus that looked more like a Madison Ave creative agency than the core of an international juggernaut – but now that companies seem to act small and nimble, it sort of made sense. On their library shelves they seemed to have the latest issue of every magazine in print. As we entered the ‘creative design’ room, we were seated around an almost too trendy glass table pieced together in square sections. There we met the rest of the Nike creative core, which unsurprisingly, did not adhere to any dress code. Each of them sort of had their own unique look, indistinguishable from the coffee shop culture. They were an intriguing group, very alive and ready to ask tough questions. They preferred an informal conversation to a formal Q&A, so it turned out to be a great personal experience for me as it turned out to offer a glimpse into yet another interesting profession. Sitting around in a circle talking about ideas for new products, the latest trends, and pop culture – and getting paid for it – yeah, I could do that one day.

So what did Nike learn from us? Probably nothing they haven’t seen or heard before, but if I did write about what they said or what we told them I’d probably be found gagged in the back of truck somewhere outside of Beaverton early next week. So I’ll keep quiet. That being said, if a year from now Nike releases the ‘Spasmattica’ shoe catering to the tall, skinny, deteriorating former athlete with no ups and an inverted sternum demographic – you’ll have an idea of what we discussed with Nike.

Boise, ID

October 26th

Thanks to the friendship that began in the freshmen dorms at Dartmouth between Matt Oppenheimer and Ben Grinnell, we were able to park Harvey at Oppy's house in Boise. It was a perfect time to relax, recharge, and get caught up on work from the past couple of days.

Although most of today was spent driving the seven hours from Boise, ID to Portland, OR, there was one fun fact from the day. Oppy's house, located on the center of one of the main street's in Boise, had the only grass lawn back in the day - so neighbors and other townspeople would gather for picnics and public gatherings.

Pretty cool.

Urban Cowboys

October 24th

Most of today was spent driving from Missoula, MT to Jackson Hole, WY. Like many of our recent drives, the setting had it’s share of rolling mountains, hidden lakes, and golden fields. Driving through these areas reminded me of what Brendan McQuillen said in our first interview back in Maine, ‘America’s fucking huge man’. He’s right. At the time, all I had to base my perspective on were news reports of overcrowding cities and the abuse of our countries natural resources – hardly the image I was seeing today. The expansive amount of untouched land was incredible.
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We arrived in Jackson at night, so it was hard to appreciate the beauty of the Grand Tetons we were driving through. Instead, I got to experience a curvy mountain road while working on a computer with Ben behind the wheel. The darkness made it impossible to ‘concentrate on objects in the distance’ and prepare myself for the hard turns we were taking. It took me until well after dinner in Jackson to feel like I was back on solid ground.

The night brought us to the Midnight Cowboy, a local Jackson hotspot that made us feel like out-of-towners not because we were in the minority without cowboy hats, but because we did not aggressively seek out dance partners from the crowd. Since it’s the offseason, the 18-25 year old ski bum demographic had not yet arrived, so the locals ran the show. Ben, Matt, and I watched in awe as the local cowboys dominated the dance floor.

My favorite cowboy looked to be about 55, had a full beard, a nice black cowboy hat, and a red plaid flannel shirt. Classic cowboy image. He also had no shame. For a span of five songs, I observed his routine. He’d ask a girl (typically half his age) to dance to the live band, then as a song ended, he’d invite her to the bar for a drink. Then she’d leave him hanging and he’d restart the cycle with another unassuming woman. On his third round (of the rounds I’d seen), he plucked a 22-year old girl* from our table and took her onto the dance floor. They danced for two songs and went to the bar for a drink before she returned to our table. This guy’s matured confidence was impressive, despite the latent intentions.

(*Ben saw this girl, Katie, near the entrance of the saloon and immediately recognized her from elementary school back east. She had been on the road for two months exploring the southern deserts with her friend Casey. Small world.)

In a way, he had an approach that reminded me of the older men I’ve seen swarming around girls my age in the New York or Boston night scene. Only those guys perfectly grease their hair, often wear sunglasses even though it’s dark, have jeans distressed by the manufacturer, and Gucci loafers. Surprisingly, their female attraction process is the similar.

So what does this similarity say or mean? Probably nothing. And as my friend Morgan says, ‘when all is said and done, sometimes you can search too hard. Sometimes there’s not a deep meaning to everything. Sometimes Sex and the City can just be watched for entertainment value, and other times you can just want to date someone because he lights you up; sometimes there aren’t answers to the questions…things just exist as truth and you delve into them as needed and not because you need to question everything. If you question everything in life you take away the mystery of it all…and isn’t the mystery want keeps us ticking?

Well said, and I can’t agree with her more, but I’m on a trip where we’re seeing different communities, cultures, and people in a short amount of time, so it’s hard not to make comparisons and contrasts in an effort to find a theme. As mundane as the similarity seems to be between the Jackson cowboy and the city guy – maybe we can call them ‘urban cowboys’, it still serves as evidence of a connection between two very different types of people, which is interesting to me. Maybe there are some common themes we’ll see around the country - regardless of where we are or who we’re with? I guess time will tell.

Hitchhiker

October 22

We spent most of our day hiking a mountain in Big Sky, Montana, so I’ll let the pictures Matt took illustrate most of our day. He’s good at making that happen.
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On the drive up to Big Sky through the beautiful Gallatin River valley, there were also many pictures taken of the scenery through the mountains – so I’ll describe what was happening on the inside of the RV. It might explain why I got some shit from the other guys.

While driving Harvey on the access road out of Bozeman towards Big Sky, I spotted a hitchhiker about a quarter mile away. My opinion on hitchhiking is positive and that if I were on the road I’d want to be picked up, and in most cases, being the hitchhiker would probably be even more unnerving than being the person to pick up the hitchhiker. Anyone willing to throw out a thumb to a stranger embraces the idea of humanity and is out there relying on the good of other people. So why not be good. The overly fantasized notion of the serial killing hitchhiker is one I don’t believe in, but the idea of the child molesting/sexually abusive/serial killing person who picks up random hitchhikers is one that does hold some merit.

Driving sixty mph gave me fifteen seconds to make the decision. I yelled back to the guys for a group approval, and only heard Adam say, ‘Sure’. (Matt and Ben were playing with each others cameras.) Since all decisions made on this trip require a three quarter majority, I took their silence as approval. In hindsight, this situation is reflective of many decisions I make – where I act instinctually on something and take shit for it later when sanity and reason is used. So it goes.

From that distance, I could tell he had two bags and a big beard, nothing else I could decipher. I made a quick situational assessment, not exactly the Blink kind, but something that took into account some things on my mind…….

1. This trip is about meeting random people and hearing great stories, so why not help create those stories.
2. The three guys I’m traveling with are big and athletic, capable of dominating a hitchhiker if needed. *Unless he had a gun, knife, or anything else an evil-minded hitchhiker might carry.
3. Selfishly, the hitchhiker would be in the back while I drove, leaving Ben and Matt with conversational duties.
4. The odds something bad would happen were equal to the odds of me graduating college in four years – highly unlikely.
5. Anyone over forty and hitchhiking has made it a long way hitchhiking without killing/molesting probably has some great insight to ‘life on the road’.

So I pulled over, we opened the door and were introduced to this guy:

His teeth(not shown) had a Letterman-ish gap and spoke with a rasp created by a lifetime of smoking. You also can’t scratch-and-sniff on the internet - yet, so I’ll complete the profile by describing his smell as a combination of Pall Mall cigarettes, truck stop grease(he’d slept at one a few days before), and the musky odor of a mountain man. Kind of like me before I showered in Bozeman.

Despite the fact that I’ve only picked up a handful of hitchhikers in my life, this one seemed to stray from the unwritten rules of ‘being a hitchhiker’ when as his third sentence he said: ‘I can’t go to New York, I have two felonies.’ Should you really mention that in the first minute of being invited onto an RV by four strangers?

An awkwardly long silence ensued, but started back up when Ben changed the subject to travel – a common theme for both sides.

This turned out to be a good move by opening up a goldmine of stories from the road – told by a guy who looked like he’d been on the road his entire life. I think the conversation was helpful for all of us, in a bunch of ways. For one, there’s nothing like building up a stereotype and breaking it back down in a forty minute span. When we arrived at the turn into Big Sky, where we parted ways, Ben had even seized the opportunity to cut deal with our new friend (Ben has a thriving collection of items he’s bartered along the way): Ben’s old binoculars for his book.

When he left I started thinking about first impressions, blunt honesty, and the country of redemption he and I shared. The felony comment was a surprising self-introduction, but in an odd way put me at ease. Why? Anyone willing to use that as an intro line has obviously gotten over their past, and using that sort of honesty, removed the immediate unknown that exists in those sort of situations. That being said, it might have been helpful if he had mentioned the cause of his felonies rather than letting our collective internal monologues determine that for him – but so it goes.

As far as the country of redemption goes, America seems to glorify those who capitalize on their ‘second chance’. Just think of Steve Jobs, Ray Lewis, or Ashlee Simpson(well, maybe) as examples of people who’ve created a second chance for themselves. Had it been any number of other countries, this hitchhiker may have been locked behind bars rather than thumbing in Bozeman, MT on a beautiful day– and this experience may have never happened.

Another day in the land of opportunity.

The Sage of Omaha

October 14th

After some morning phone calls, we managed to get access at the Omaha Community Playhouse – a place famous for launching the careers of Marlon Brando and Henry Fonda back in the fifties and sixties. Situated in a residential area on the outskirts of the city, the playhouse seems to be every bit as vibrant as it may have been back in day. Amid the college aged apprentices taking classes, the high school kids working behind the scenes, and the adults working the offices – there is a thriving theatre community capable of producing a new play each month. When we arrived, we met with one of the professors teaching a class of eight students who was interested enough in TYAP to give us the floor. The class was a mix between techies, actors, and writers – ideal for the impromptu group interview Matt and I conducted. So while Matt moved the camera around the room, I prompted a conversation by asking the Vanity Fair essay question, ‘What is on the mind of America’s youth?’ Given the number of ‘creative’ types in the class, the connection between the thoughts of American youth and screenwriting was apparent. In the same way that Avenue Q seemed to have captured the thoughts of the internet age, this conversation may have brought out some of the latent ideas or issues our generation is facing: the war, the politically divided nation, the reliance on oil, the moral dilemmas of our time, capitalism vs. creativity, etc. Since I’ve been intrigued to discover what is being written about or conceptualized within the young drama community – this was an interesting experience. It sort of proved to me that the pressing issues floating around on the minds of our generation are being put down on paper somewhere, which is good to know. From what I’ve observed or read about, a lot of the trendsetting movements in culture throughout history are seeded by the type of people I met in that room, whose creations (plays, books, movies) have influences far beyond those rooms. Could they become the next great American playwrights or screenwriters who drive culture in a new direction? Is the next Crash being conceived from this room? Probably not, but their back and forth commentary made for good footage.
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Over dinner Adam and I spent some time with Jim Conway, who has that rare ability to make people shut up and listen without needing to raise his voice. Keeping tabs on my cousins Meghan, Kevin, and Kiki may have helped him develop that skill, but my guess is that it came naturally from battling chronic illnesses over the past fifteen years. As Kevin says, ‘getting sick taught him to cut through the bullshit to what matters when dealing with other people.’ That sort of made me think, should we have to rely on debilitating sickness to avoid the bullshit?

Anyways, Jim spoke about the transition of Omaha from a meat-packing town in the 60’s to the insurance capital/cultural center it is today. He reminded us that Omaha is home to the College World Series, Warren Buffett, Boystown, and the mysteriouly popular Saddle Creek Records. He described a ten block brick building in South Omaha that served as the hub of meat packing action, complete with a classy steakhouse and a ballroom for local proms. With all the cattle down below, Jim said the ballroom seemed to have a smell to it at all times – sort of like the whole town on hot and humid summer days. But today, the old cattle stalls and ten block section has been bought by a developer. And if the developer follows the example of every other city we’ve visited so far, the old meat packing/industrial district will be transformed into a faux-artsy yet trendy section of town. Then it will be featured in magazines as the ‘it’ place to go in Omaha, experience a wave of mainstream visitors – maybe even some tourists, and slowly attract more established shops and restaurant chains who didn’t necessarily want to take a risk in the beginning but are hoping to ride the wave of popularity.

I’m happy Adam and I got to hear about it’s past.

Another thing that I noticed as Jim prepared dinner was the constant flow of new traffic throughout the house. In a span of twenty minutes, there were three different neighborhood kids who came into the house to say hi, ask if they could stay for dinner, and then proceed to chasing Adam with squirt guns. Good times. As I found out later from my cousin Kiki, what I had seen was a normal event – and that ‘Jimmy’ served as the defacto patriarch of the under 16 crowd.

Jim mentioned that ‘it’s a lot like 1950’s Americana, with the quiet streets, unlocked doors, and the kids going from house to house.’ To me it looked awesome. Not only as a place to grow up but as a place to raise a family. I'm not really thinking about that yet, but all sorts of strange thoughts are creeping into my mind when I run into kids my age around the country who are married, having kids, and working 9-5 jobs.

Hey Boobs

October 10th

Hey Rubes was a strip joint in Austin, Minnesota. When my dad and his friends were growing up, they referred to their hangout as ‘Hey Boobs’. Today, Hey Rubes is no longer open every day of the week and goes by Paradise Lounge, a name provided by the new owners - I know this because we visited my dad’s hometown yesterday on our way through southern Minnesota.  

I also learned that entering the new Paradise Lounge is best done from the back, where the timeless ‘Hey Rubes’ logo remains spray painted on the door, so ‘you can keep your reputation in the process’. Whether that reputation has to do with local tradition or the fact we were attempting to enter a strip club in the center of town is still up in the air, but the insight was provided by Carter Wagner, a childhood friend of my dad’s who was a great host for our night in Spamtown, USA.

We met Carter and his wife Meg for dinner at a local Austin restaurant where Carter, being the owner of a local construction company, knew everyone in the restaurant by first name. As he worked the room shaking hands and kissing babies, it reminded me of clips from the presidential campaigns last November that followed Kerry and Bush through ‘small towns’ – only this was real. It was the Austin I’d heard about from my dad and grandfather, a place where people meant what they said and preserved the small town feel.

Over dinner we got into a sloppy debate as to the correct label for our generation. Meg viewed us as the ‘Leftover Generation’, since we’re inheriting both the good and bad leftovers of the baby boomer generation. As she rattled off issues like: environmental pollution, a growing national debt, and an inherited disillusionment of the American Dream – I surmised that she meant mostly bad leftovers. Carter on the other hand labeled us very adamantly as the ‘Sub-Zero Generation’. In his mind, our generation is starting off from a worse spot than any previous generation, and should be labeled accordingly. With all the cosmic change occurring nationally and internationally, maybe our generation deserves both of these pessimistic labels.

After dinner, we spent some time visiting the Hormel meat packing plant, a factory and company closely interwoven into the economic condition of Austin. When my dad grew up, approximately a third of the 26,000 city residents worked at the plant. Today, the same portion of the 20,000 residents work at the factory – the rest supplied by Mexican immigrants willing to participate in the ‘kill’ process. There is actually a billboard on the US border that advertises employment for the Hormel factory. This made me think, isn’t unemployment on the rise in the US?

Carter took us bar hopping after dinner, except it was only to the places my dad would have gone when he was younger – thereby eliminating all the new clean establishments. I won’t get into what my thoughts and feelings were while visiting my dad’s roots, or what is was like hearing stories about him from Carter. Maybe later though, right now I’m still trying to figure out what it all means to me.

I will say that at about one in the morning, Carter(slightly inebriated 44 year old) and me(a former high school athlete) took on Adam (captain of a D1 lacrosse program) and Ben (professional athlete) in a game of basketball at the Wagner house. It was close, but in the end Carter and I got hammered and went to bed.

Streetwalking in Madison

October 7th

Ben was down in St. Louis for the day he would normally have been blogging about, so I’ll do a quick summary of our stop in Madison, Wisconsin.

From everything I’d heard about Madison from my BC roommate, Andrew Miller, I was excited to get out onto State Street and get a feel for the students of UWisconsin. We arrived and met Mac Verstandig, the editor-in-chief of the BadgerHerald – the largest independent daily student newspaper in the nation. Adam is writing a profile on him, so I won’t get into details, but I’ll just say he was impressive. If I were going to use Malcolm Gladwell’s The Tipping Point to label him, he’d be a maven. (Thanks to Pete Eisenmann(sp?), future NY ad exec, for setting that up)

Matt and I left Mac and Adam in the Blockbuster on State Street, where they continued the profile interview. We began approaching random people and asking them two of our favorite questions, ‘What is the name you would give to our generation?’ and ‘What decade are we in?’ Although both questions have completely subjective answers, it’s still amusing to listen to people – regardless of where they are or who they are – create their own versions of the answer. It’s a very individual and creative process, as evidenced by their remarks.

For Matt and I, shooting a documentary about young Americans gives us a reason to approach anyone around our age and make conversation, which in itself is a great experience….and sort of makes me realize how easy it would be for someone to de-awkwardize(if that’s a word) any social situation where you don’t know someone. To think of all the connections, relationships, or experiences that go undiscovered when people remain separated by an invisible shell of self-consiousness is depressing. Who knows how many potential girlfriends, boyfriends, friends, or life events are passed up just because there is a ‘perception’ that spontaneous human interaction is unnatural and embarrassing?  It’s like the first couple weeks of college(or any new situation where you’re on your own) – there is an unspoken urgency to meet people so that you can find a personal niche in new surroundings. For me it was an incredible time – but why did it stop once we’ve ‘found’ our friends?  As Tom, the punk rocker we met at the Indiana dunes said, ‘the magic in the world happens when people let themselves become open to the new experiences and new people around them.’

What I’ve found is that nearly everyone is receptive to being approached randomly, and more often than not, is extremely interested in being listened to and getting the chance to share their stories to a camera. I don’t know whether it was the Girls Gone Wild empire, the omnipresence of MTV, or the publicity=fame factor in pop culture that shapes the image of a camera crew – but it’s not hard to get people on camera saying what is really on their mind’s.

 On this particular evening, State Street pulsed with energy and people, so it was easy to find the magic. In no particular order, we spoke with a group of girls in sweatpants trying to find apple cider(they didn’t drink) to take back to their apartment, a mixed group of gay/straight students who wanted to comment on gender relations, a group of white guys from Eau Claire Wisconsin who’d come there for one reason – to stimulate themselves with any drug they could get their hands on, and finally, a group of black guys who offered their opinions on racism, America and the ‘truth about New Orleans.’

It all made for good footage, but didn’t even compare to our final five minutes of filming – when a drug dealer and the Eau Claire boys let us film their cocaine purchase on a side street. We couldn’t really believe what we were getting, and probably still don’t fully understand it, but we appreciated the chance to take part in ‘the real side of America’s youth’ (as described by one of the Eau Claire boys).

See you in a few days.

91 or 21? It’s hard to tell….

October 5th

We’re on the road exploring America’s future, meeting young people and slowly discovering a flavor of our peers across the country. We’ve spent time with people who’ve made us think, some who’ve made us more compassionate, and a few who’ve showed us a good time and made us laugh.  Living a day in the life of American youth across the country has been incredible – the ideal chance to explore not just America but ourselves too. As we drive west in the RV and debrief the adventures of the last day, it’s hard not to notice an influence in thought and perception aboard Harvey. I’m starting to believe in the adage, ‘the more you see, the more you understand.’

To catch up on site maintenance, writing, and sleep, we arranged for three days in Chicago after Matt’s grandparents generously offered two nights at their ‘place’. Having never spent any real time in Chicago, it gave us time to check out the famed ‘Magnificent Mile’ of Michigan Ave, the diversity of the Linkin Park scene, Rush street after dark and a classic blues bar – a staple of Chi-town tradition. Some good timing also gave us the chance to see the White Sox/Red Sox series from the Chicago point of view and the opportunity to visit the Oprah Winfrey show. (Read Adam’s blog about our day on Oprah, it’s good.)

But for me, and I think for a few of the other guys too, the most intriguing part of our visit to Chicago was not any physical place we could visit at all – it was the time we spent with Mr. and Mrs. Heineman (Matt’s grandparents).  At 92 and 91 (Mr. Heineman says he, ‘married an older woman’), they were members of what Tom Brokaw labels The Greatest Generation. By definition, they are the generation that survived the depression, the second World War, and helped define the American dream for other generations to follow.

Before I continue, I should note that Matt’s grandfather is not the first Mr. Heineman I’ve observed, learned from, and admired. I met Matt’s father about five years ago, who in any situation, seems to always be the smartest guy in the room. (From now on Matt’s dad will be MH1 and Matt’s grandfather will be MH2, because I’m already confusing myself.)  Just after meeting MH1 I decided to adopt his method of annotating books while reading and experienced an immediate boost in reading comprehension for classes. Is there a correlation? Probably. MH1 may not be aware of it, but he has also shown me how to develop a line of questioning that gets beyond the surface and gets to the crux of an idea or opinion. My guess is that MH1 probably honed this skill either as a Rhodes Scholar or as one of the top lawyers in the world, but regardless, absorbing at least a shade of that ability for this project has been incredibly valuable as we meet young people who oftentimes possess a hidden story worth telling.

So the reason I mentioned MH1 is that my time with him made me intrigued by the possibility to meet the ‘source’ – his parents and Matt’s grandparent’s(MH2 and Mrs. Heineman). After all, we’re trying to write a book and film a movie about a generation still working on defining itself in history, so the chance to spend a few meals with two members of the well defined ‘greatest generation’ presented itself as a great opportunity. Would there be differences and similarities between the two generations? What did they think about our generation? What I found surprised me, but at the same time, didn’t surprise me at all.

Having moved to the city of Chicago nearly seventy years ago during the depression, the crystallized intelligence and life experiences were plentiful. As I expected, MH2 was sage-like, and similar to MH1, rarely spoke about himself or his accomplishments. He preferred peppering the four of us with questions about our trip and requests for stories from the road to divulging us with his own ‘self-calls’. I was not surprised. To be honest, with both MH1 and MH2, I’d really like it if they self-called a little bit more. If either of you are reading this, please keep that in mind. We’ll ceremoniously remove the ‘self-call’ label when talking with either of you, so please share your stories.

Since this trip is about dismantling misperceptions from the road, I will list some of the characteristics of MH2, whose surprising interests dismantled the original vision I had about a 91 year old grandparent who dressed in a suit and tie for all occasions.

• He drives a sportscar, and not just because it’s a sportscar. He actually drives it like a sportscar. On one turn in a tight parking ramp, I’m pretty sure I felt him accelerate around the turn.

• He wakes up at 5 a.m and reads five papers every morning. The fact that he wakes up at 5 am is not surprising, I’m pretty sure most grandparents I’ve met wake up early. What surprised me is that after he reads the five papers (WSJ, NYTimes, Financial Times, Investor’s Business Daily, and the Chicago Tribune), he jumps on the internet to hit up some blogs and the Drudge Report. Here I thought our generation was one of the only ‘in the know’ with the blog world. Apparently not.

• Netflix is not just for college kids looking to save on rental fees for new releases. It’s also for renting classic movies from the 40’s-70’s so that they can be delivered directly to an apartment without traveling to the video store. MH2 showed me this side of the Netflix revolution.

• Modern art is not just for the hipster crowd. It’s for anyone whose tastes carry into the splatter art world. And yes, a couple that has been married for 70 years can have that taste.

• The ability to discuss the intricacies of the megapixels on a digital camera is completely normal and easy. Especially when you embrace, rather than shy away from technology, even if the first digital camera was invented when you were 85 and the personal computer in your late sixties.

If I were to compare a list of MH2’s interests and hobbies to one of my peers, it would be hard to distinguish the difference names and ages were not attached. If there was one thing that I took away my time with MH2 – besides Mrs. Heineman’s advice on a lasting marriage: ‘learn to tolerate and see what’s good in your differences’ – it’s the lesson that change happens, so you’d better be willing to adapt. His life had been changed by not only the national and world events like the depression, the world wars, the Cold War, the social revolution, etc., but also by the many personal events that had gone on to shape who he was when I met him last Wednesday. The expected and unexpected changes had happened, so he reacted by deciding how to best assimilate the changes into his personal life. He seemed to have done a good job of it.

After meeting MH2, I couldn’t stop thinking about how the world would operate if everyone embraced positive change. I thought about it on our drive to Madison, Wisconsin, but then I realized that was too globally idealistic, and what I had seen from MH2 and Mrs. Heineman was a very individual example of adaptation to change – no less respectable than something on a global scale. Ironically, what I had seen made me think of the third generation of Mr. Heinemans’, my friend Matt, whose favorite quote reminded me of our goals as individuals experiencing unprecedented global change and reflected well on my time with MH1 and MH2. It’s simple:

‘Think Globally. Act locally. Commit individually.’

And since what I just wrote had little to do with what we actually did in Chicago, here's a description.....

For Thursday night, the four of us split up. Ben flew to St. Louis to profile the founder of Hip Hop Congress and visit his girlfriend. Matt and Adam spent some time in Millennial Park listening to an outdoor concert and exploring the night life in Linkin Park, an area famed for it’s cultural diversity and thriving blues scene. From what I was told the next morning, they had the opportunity to hear a truly special musician in Chico – a local black guy whose passionate lyrics contributed to what matt called ‘one of the best concerts in my life’. The two of them shared the night with Sam and Meg, two of Adam’s friends from back home who’ve found themselves transplanted to Chicago. To be honest, it’s been fun spending time with friends of friends in different places, as with most road trips, the local knowledge provided by each one of them adds to the experience. Sam, a member of the Chicago Cubs organization and the all-time hits leader for the College World Series in Omaha, is an unassuming presence. Despite his collegiate and professional success, not once did I hear him self call his abilities. Like most of the interesting and often impressive people I’ve been meeting, it took a description from someone else(in this case Adam) to hear his ‘story’. Having just earned his degree from Stanford University, he’s pushing himself to earn a spot in the majors in the next few years and fulfill his childhood dream. When he’s not working out with the organization, he works 40 hours a week for Stats Incorporated – the company responsible for keeping tabs on ERA’s, pitch counts, batting averages, and all the other numbers of baseball. On top of that, he’s a diabetic and forces himself to check insulin levels in his blood 5(?) times a day. As he says, he’d ‘rather deal with it well now than have to face the consequences of neglecting his body later.’ I couldn’t agree with him more.  It’s a good story, and I’m impressed with his determination.

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Around 6 pm, I took the video camera and left the city of Chicago by cab. With Ben visiting St. Louis for the next couple of days and the guys exploring the Linkin Park scene, I was alone on this adventure to Northwestern University. Striking out on my own for a while definitely had it’s perks, but my Northwestern experience made me wish the opportunity had been shared with one of the other guys.
Northwestern is located in Evanston, a lakeside suburb of Chicago with large homes and quiet streets. Someone must have once thought placing 6-7,000 college aged kids in this setting was a good idea – according to some of the students and locals I spoke with, it has a love/hate relationship. On the national scale, Northwestern is known for it’s Broadcast Journalism and Performing Arts/Drama departments. Thanks to Chad Crutchfield, one of my closest friends and roommate at Boston College, we scored an interview with Christie, his ‘life partner’ for lack of a more fitting term. I know this because I spent my entire sophomore year trying to fall asleep during their phone conversations.

Christie is smart, articulate, and Type-A. Her candid remarks on her hopes, dreams and ambitions contributed to a great interview. I’d say more, but she’ll make for a great in-depth profile.

Post-interview I had a chance to drive around with Christie at her new job at campus escort, where she ‘safely’ drove people around in a car from point A to Point B on the Northwestern Campus. The escort service is designed to protect people from exposure to dangerous situations, like rapes, muggings, and other reputation damaging events for universities. From what I could see, this escort service was used in the same fashion as most other collegiate escort services were – as a free taxi. Christie agreed, admitting that she’d picked up the same abusers of the system each night, many of whom were on their way to pre-game at a friends before going out.

I brought the camera along and the situation made for a sort of taxi-cab confessions. It was fun. For some of the passengers I used the camera, for some others, I did not. Interestingly, when I did not have the camera visible some of the passengers acted as though Christie and I were not there – carrying on conversations amongst themselves(if there were two), staying completely quiet or talking on the phone. This new perspective made me want to speak with any cab drivers I have in the future. After all, they’re people too.

During our ride, we picked up a senior guy named Jon. He was real. When he heard about the project I was working on, he invited me up to his buddy Brad’s place, where we conducted an impromptu informal interview. Like Christie, Brad was opinionated, articulate, and filled with good ideas. We got them on camera for an hour and a half and then went out for the night. Good times.

From the NASCAR Subculture to the Amish culture - in a day

October 1

I woke up with greasy hair, a headache, and a sweaty clamminess from sleeping with open windows in an RV next to a lake. It sort of reminded me of camping in a tent and waking up damp. Or the time I woke up after senior prom on Lindholm’s patio. Regardless, it was all good from there.

Matt motivated me onto the bikes for a ride through the campsite we had stayed at for the night. Having just watched the NASCAR imax in Cleveland, the RV subculture noted in the movie was revealed at this campsite. There was a red Dale Earnhardt Jr. golf cart next to a 40 foot Monaco and even a # 3 race flag flying just beneath the American flag. Beyond that, it seemed as though America’s number one spectator sport drew many of it’s disciples from the members of the RV subculture – which from what I’ve gathered, is absolutely enormous in size. A lot of them seemed to be at this campground.

Like other days, we began our drive heading one way only to end up in an entirely unplanned destination. This time it happened driving on I-69 south, when Ben spotted the sign for Wild Winds Buffalo Preserve in Fremont, Indiana and pulled us over for an adventure. Since he’s starting up a Bison themed clothing company (check it out in early 2006) stressing sustainability, local production, and organic materials – this was a welcomed sidestep of the daily itinerary. Although I didn’t expect it at the time, Ben’s last second decision to pull off the highway led to a one of the best interviews to date for The Young Americans Project. Here’s how it happened:

On the way out of Fremont, which is considered a ‘one-stop-light-town’(meaning there is only one four corner intersection – or so it was explained to me),  we stopped to fill up Harvey at a gas station. Thirsty, I entered a nearby grocery store to pick up a few gallons of water for the RV. Despite feeling sort of oblivious in the checkout process, the cashier engaged me in small talk about the amount of water I was buying and the level of my thirst. I played along, left the store, but could not ignore the vibe I had gotten from the young female cashier. It wasn’t a sexual or flirtatious vibe in any way, but she exuded an impressive level of self-confidence. I was taken back and became curious.

We parked the RV, prepared the video camera and spoke with the store manager so she’d give Katherine (the cashier) the chance to sit and talk with us during her cigarette break. After spending some time getting to know Katherine, we let the cameras roll on what turned out to be an incredibly personal account of a battle against her inner demons. She spoke candidly about dropping out of high school, her emotional abuse and physical addiction to sexual intercourse, fears for her sister serving in Iraq, small town life, and the crystal meth epidemic that plagues her friends. Her story was powerful, personal, and most of all – real. There was no need for fabrication or lies, the honest truth sent a big enough message to me. And probably Matt too.
After she had returned to work, Matt and I looked at each other with that sort of mutual understanding people seem to get when they know the other is thinking what they’re thinking. It was an awesome moment to share. For me, it served as yet another reminder why the world of documentary film is such an appealing way to explore yourself through other people. A total rush. The time with Katherine had raised the standards I set in my mind for random interviews.

We left Fremont and traveled to Nappanee, a town mixed with Amish people and average American citizens. Driving through the night, Ben and I observed a few horse drawn buggies and some Amish people out walking. Combined with the interval lightning, it was a surreal scene. We pulled over into the parking lot of Newmar RV corporation and went to bed. 

To get a first hand account of what it's like to live in an Amish community, please call Emily Koenig at Richmond University in Virginia. Her cell phone number is (804) 240 - 8868.

Ohio State, Political Debates, and Medieval Knights

September 30th

The day began at an eastern Ohio campground, a place we had chosen the previous night for it’s ‘beautiful atmosphere’ and ‘friendly staff’ as described in Frommer’s Best Campgrounds in the US Book – but more importantly, for it’s dump station. Harvey had been a trooper for the first week of this around the country adventure, but like any relationship, listening to each others needs is important. And from what we could tell, Harvey was in need.

Matt had become the closest to Harvey in the past week, so by the groundrules of RV life, was self-selected to oversee the first dump station experience. This could have been a rewarding time, like helping a friend learn a new skill or get through a tough time, but we had waited too long – and Harveywas brimming with anger from the lack of attention. To make things worse, the ‘pristine atmosphere’ described in the Campground Guide did not apply to the dump station, so the entire experience ended up being a test of Matt’s determination in the face of an uncontrollably bad situation. So, where were the rest of us during this painful process? We were doing what any good buddies would be doing in this situation – videotaping and taking pictures for the website.

Around noon, we arrived at Ohio State University – the largest university in the country. At 2:05 pm, we found a parking spot and began our profile of the day with the creators of ‘The Pragmatist’, a student publication that received an MTV grant to enable their vision. The three of them offered great insight into the grant writing process, the challenges of a start-up publication, and the value of objective journalism on college campuses. They even praised ‘The Sentinel’, OSU’s conservative voice on campus for a willingness to collaborate rather than compete when reporting the facts and carrying out their intended missions. Could this be a harbinger of what’s to come in American journalism?

While Matt and I filmed, Ben and Adam ventured into the abyss that is the OSU sprawl. On their adventure, they found Keith, a 37-year old with a red-goatee that made him look like Alexi Lalas from the ’94 World Cup. He and his class had just transcribed a medieval piece of literature so they could learn medieval knight fighting techniques.

Thanks to Dan Oberlin, former standout football and lacrosse player at Upper Arlington High School(we saw the pictures in his room) and currently of Dartmouth College, the four were of us were invited to the Oberlin’s house for a good home cooked meal only five minutes away from the OSU campus. We talked about Dan, his athletic career, his summer job, and life in Ohio. But for me, the most entertaining moment came when I realized that the friend of Dan’s mom who stopped over for dinner was also the mom of a classmate of mine from BC. Big country, small world.

We spent the early part of the night filming a debate between the head of the college Republicans and the head of the college Democrats at OSU. Apparently the atmosphere of the Presidential elections last November that focused the attention of national politics on the state of Ohio inspired a few of the students to become active on the collegiate level. Interestingly, the 23-year old with an eyebrow ring who spoke for the Democrats had been a high school drop out. He had worked his way to a GED and paid his way through Junior College and into OSU at the beginning of his junior year. He was impressive. Speaking clearly, concisely, and convincingly – he stole the show that night and if there was an actual ‘winner’ of the debate, in my mind he would have been it. He was the classic American underdog story - and the crowd loved it.

A Lucky Accident

September 25th

Like most of my Saturday’s, I woke up in a hypnopompic condition, which is the semiconscious state preceding waking. Only before today, I never knew it was called a hypnopompic state. But our close quarters on the RV revealed Adam’s habit of looking up words he doesn’t know when he reads books -  and hypnopompic was a word from ‘I am Charlotte Simmons’ that neither of us knew and we both learned.

I left the hypnopompic state when I realized Ben’s bare left foot dangled three inches from my face and that Harveythe RV was turning into a sauna from the sun. So I got up, it was about noon.

For the night we had parked two blocks from Thayer Street and the rest of the Brown Campus, in front of Matt’s cousin Thalia and her husband Jamie’s townhouse. I walked into the house to find Thalia in the exact position I had met her three weeks earlier while out at Matt’s on Martha’s Vineyard planning this trip – spoonfeeding her baby Benjamin in his high chair – only this time in their home. It made me think of the story my mom tells me about how as a baby being fed in the highchair, I would yell ‘Go home Amy Berg…..Go home’ at her cousin – who was living with us for the summer. Our entrance was easier than Amy Berg’s twenty years ago.

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From what I’ve observed, Jamie and Thalia are unconventionally intelligent and have traveled extensively to countries with cultures outside the realm of mainstream tourism, so their house serves as an accurate reflection. They have a few Buddhist statues, an open space in compliance with the rules of Feng Shui and enough Apple products to satisfy their ‘creative’ professions. (Jamie is a filmmaker/choreographer/dancer/professor and Thalia is a professor of creative writing at Brown.) The mystique grows when I find out they’re both high school drop outs who’ve gone on to achieve advanced degrees in their respective fields. Reminding me that there is no single way everyone should follow.

For most of the afternoon, Jamie shared his understanding on Final Cut Pro and the best way to ‘Log and Capture’ digital video files while bouncing around in the back of Harvey.
 
I did take a little bit of alone time during the day, which as the other of the guys have mentioned in their blogs, may be a good idea once in a while over the next three months. I went for a run through downtown Providence, along the canal and through the newly revitalized areas of the city which have been renovated by optimistic private citizens. It all looked pretty nice and semi-proved to me that it’s possible for a city to operate despite a well-organized mob scene and a mayor who went to jail for corruption and being known to ‘burn cigarettes the hands of people who betray him’

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Our day really picked up when Adam used Harvey’s passenger side mirror to help find our next profile subject, Joe Suave, a straight talking 24-year old Italian from outside Providence with a ‘cock so big it gets him into trouble.’ We know this because he told us a lot of stories in the short time we were with him, and sure enough, each one followed the manhood as punishment theme. Problems with his girls, problems making decisions, his motivations in life – each were altered by the main point of the monologue, his ‘cock’.

In a creepy way, I sort of agreed with what he was saying, even with the delivery. It seems that most drama, whether it be real life or in movies, originates with a hint of sexual desire that manifests itself in the ambitions and actions of those who take their desire too far. Then the drama unfolds as they deal with the repercussions. Regardless of what those desires might be: the desire to get a nice job for the paycheck that will fund a lifestyle, or the itch that leads people to sacrifice their morals to the desire, or the raw biological desire – Joe Suave hit on them in his honest self-description. I was impressed. It’s not often you hear a semi-accurate distillation of human nature in a line like ‘my cock get’s me into trouble’.

I’m happy we had the chance to connect with Joe Suave. On the most base level, the cost of Harvey’s damaged mirror was about equal to what the four of us might have paid for a good movie. And by all measures of entertainment, Joe Suave was - and may be in an adults only portion of our DVD -  a good rival to any Saturday Night Live standup routine. He was like Bob Saget (The Aristocrats version, not the Full House one)only more vulgar and completely raw. It should come as no surprise that Joe, when asked ‘what he would like to say to America?’, replied ‘America, I should be a pornstar. I know I’d be better than that guy who slammed Paris Hilton in that video. My cock is way bigger!’  

Here’s to Joe, the second great random profile we’ve done along the way.

Be back in a few days.

- Wigs

On the Road...Finally

September 20th

Just before I was picked up at Boston College by Matt and Ben, a friend of mine said, 'you can plan all you want, but often the best experiences develop from encounters with random people in random places'. So with that in mind, I boarded the 30' RV – our home, 'office', and means of transportation for the next three months – and drove up to Damariscotta, Maine (to Adam's house) for a five day trip planning session. I'd say it was a pretty cool feeling, an odd mix of the first day of college with the anxious anticipation of what lies ahead. It might compare it to the feeling of graduating college, but I haven't crossed that bridge yet, so I'll let one of the other guys make that comparison in a later blog.

Anyway, for the last few days we've put together an itinerary that hits all 48 continental states, has a number of scheduled profiles throughout the trip, and leaves enough flexibility for us to follow what feels good on any given day. Our hope is that the suggestions from the visitors to this site can provide local insight, maybe even lead us to some great young Americans to profile, or direct us to a place we've never been. As one of the Maine organic farmers we profiled today said, 'America is fucking huge' and three months only gives us time to scratch the surface. Sort of like studying abroad – only in the US. 

But that's tomorrow.

For now, we'll be learning Macromedia Dreamweaver, playing with the new cameras, and scrambling to drive the RV to Acadia National Park by sunrise.