Family Resemblances

One midwinter eve a long, long time ago, my mother was putting me down for the night, and when I slipped into bed, an enormous, dark cockroach slid out from under the bed covers and made a beeline (roachline) for my 5-year old butt. My mother is squeamish about a lot of things -- violence, Southpark, family secrets, talking about sex, learning new things -- but she is unmoved by the creeping, crawling things of the earth. The cockroach never made it to my rear end because it ended its life between her thumb and forefinger.

Today, my mother has Boxelder bugs that live in the warm sunlight of the living room.


Contrary to what you might imagine, Boxelder bugs are not attracted to Boxelder trees. They're attracted to my mother. They end their lives in our garbage disposal.

My mother and I are dissimilar in certain ways. I can't kill anything with my bare hands, for instance. At home in Princeton, I have a disoriented, starving squash bug who lives on the watering can and who I don't have the heart to get rid of. My mother tans easily and loves the outdoors; I have vampirically white skin and spend a lot of time in libraries. My mother loves children and is very tolerant of them. I am not interested in children and 'tolerant' is not a word people use to describe me. My mother is easily intimidated by other people and sensitive to their needs. I am selfish and inflexible and have no patience for people who need things. But as I sit here on Thanksgiving day watching her forget to put the sugar in the pumpkin pie, I'm reminded of the fact that I forgot to use soap in the shower last night. (Don't ask.) My mother and I were also last night's evening entertainment, she did a hula dance for me, my youngest brother, and my dad; I fell face first out of a reclining chair while my father took pictures.

It's not that I would actually want to change anything about the things we share or don't share, with the possible exception of my mother's legs, which we don't share, and which I wish we did. (If you ever get the chance to see them, my mother has marvelous legs.) I just want to know what it means if I am in fact turning into my mother. Wouldn't it mean that as I watch my mother move 14 house plants from the window sill to the kitchen sink (?) I'm actually watching myself, in the future, doing inexplicable things with the houseplants? Doesn't it mean I and not she just baked an inedible, sugarless pumpkin pie? That I wake up at 5am (which, dammit, I already do), that I'm humming the same effing Gilbert & Sullivan song for the third day in a row, and carrying on about turning into my mother? I guess I have that one covered, too.

Then again, as I look at my dad biking in the middle of the living room in knee-high black socks and neon green shorts ... it could be worse.

Princeton Vuja De

When I was in college, my father told me he wouldn't go back to college for a million dollars. At the time, I thought, "well that's dumb!" Cause college is great, right? Well, college is great, when you're in college. When you're not in college anymore, you're just not in college anymore.

There are things that happen over and over again, like heading to the bathroom to eat snacks in private, and there are thing that don't happen again. College is like getting a polio vaccine or seeing Haley's comet. It only happens once in your lifetime.

Correction: twice! About six weeks ago, I moved back to Princeton, my alma mater. At the time, it didn't seem insane. (There were good reasons, too, which I won't go into here, but one of which is the proximity to New York without the New York rent. There have also been unanticipated perks like the fact that I have yet to fill up my gas tank. The only time I didn't have to fill up my gas tank in Chicago was when I didn't have a gas tank.) But, as it turns out, the move is making me a little insane. I keep having this strange feeling I've been here before.

At the end of Thorton Wilder's Our Town, the main character, Emily, is given a chance to relive a single day from her past. (I forgot to mention, she's dead.) The other folks in the graveyard tell her to pick a slow day--a day when nothing happened. Because to pick a really amazing day, like the day you fell in love, would be psychically damaging, like looking at photographs of someone who died and then seeing them appear in front of you. Emily picks her 12th birthday, and she lasts about 90 seconds. She hears her mother's voice and has to call the whole thing off. Don't relive your 12th birthday.

Every day I walk out onto University Place, and every day I think, What in God's Name is Happening Here? I think I see my old friends. Is that Todd on his bike? Cindy on the Erg machine? The same tan flock of men's cross-country runners blows by in the morning. The word I'm looking for is déjà vu, except you can't have déjà vu at the same time every day unless you wake up every morning having forgotten yesterday. Déjà vu is a feeling of compelling familiarity in a situation that hasn't actually happened before. What I'm having is a feeling of compelling familiarity in a situation where I have a pretty good idea why it's familiar. So why's it creepy?

For one, I've never had déjà vu. I tell people this and they don't believe me, but it's true. I would kill to have déjà vu. There's also (hilariously enough) presque vu (which is the sensation of being just on the verge of recovering a latent memory--when something is on the tip of your tongue) and jamais vu, which is seeing something familiar as though it were brand new. This is the bizarre experience I often have of catching sight of my reflection in a shop window and thinking it's my mother.

I think the word I want is vuja de. But then, it turns out, vuja de already has a meaning. (WTF?) According to the Urban Dictionary, vuja de is the feeling of definitely never having been somewhere before. To me, that's lame. I have that feeling all the time and it's not worthy of having a name. I'm gonna keep using vuja de my way.

Vuja de: the feeling you relive every day that you knew you were getting into something vaguely dumb, and you went ahead and did it anyway.

Unstoppable Drew Beatz

I blogged a little over a year ago about Drew Beatz, a.k.a. my little brother, a.k.a. Drew Connery. It's possible that two people coming from humble origins in Papillion, Nebraska (affectionately known to residents as Papio) could have gone in more opposite directions. I make music that sounds like this and Drew makes music that sounds like this. But we both make music.

After being signed a little over a year ago by Outkast's label, Dungeon Family, Drew moved out to L.A. and promptly shattered his ankle into 5 million pieces. Now finally recovered, Drew and Ty-G, his collaborator, are on the move promoting their existing album, and their new one.

Check it out.

Am I jealous? Maybe. Do I want to change my name to Laydy Maj? Kind of. Stay tuned for updates on a new brother-sister RAP OPERA.

I Come from Mundts

People often ask me where I come from.

It just so happens that I come from a family of stout German farmers in middle America called the Mundts. And it just so happens that the Mundts had a family reunion a week ago -- August 23 to be exact.

As you might imagine from the sound of the name, Mundts (not to be confused with Manns, to whom we're related) are a hardy people. We eat. We sweat. We plant stuff. We have large families. Well, I don't. But they do. Contrary to what you might expect, however, Mundts are unusually creative people. My grandma, Grace Safarik, sings show tunes on command. My uncle, Andy Safarik, engendered in me a longtime fascination with bent wire because of the beautiful twisted wire sculptures that fill my grandfather's basement. My mother, Candy, and her brothers appeared in countless Gilbert and Sullivan musicals when they were young, which is why I still know all the lyrics to HMS Pinafore. My brother, Drew Connery (a.k.a. Drew Beatz), writes music for the rap label, Dungeon Family, out in LA.

And because we all so love to perform, there is always a talent show at the Mundt Family Reunion, and everything counts for talent. This year, the talent show turned into a talent contest. You can check out those sWEEt vidZ on YouTube.

I Guess this is Goodbye, Hyde Park

As I'm preparing to leave Hyde Park for greener pastures, or maybe just for pastures, period, since the midway doesn't count, I've been thinking about what's most Hyde Park about Hyde Park.

I lived briefly in Cairo back in the late nineties, and when I think back on that time, what I remember best are things that don't seem particularly memorable. I recall that the hemisphere was upside down (from the one I was used to), that the hot and cold knobs were reversed, and that 7-up came in tiny, glass bottles. For a brief period of time, America meant a certain alignment of the stars and being able to turn the water on without scalding myself. What will make me recall Hyde Park years from now?

Will I miss the library, where, as a friend recently pointed out to me, the same group of people has been congregating in the same room for going on a decade without introducing themselves to one another? Will I miss the Obamacade that once a month makes me curse the president for living in my hood?

I was at the Point yesterday (the one truly great thing about the south side of Chicago is our beloved, rocky beach) and I snorted in a waft of sugar, crisped skin and suntan lotion that shot me back 25 years to the snack bar at the Seward, Nebraska pool where I used to buy Laffy Taffy in my saggy kid bikini. Maybe I'll be strolling down the perfect, manicured sidewalks of Princeton, New Jersey next year and ... not remember Hyde Park's trash-riddled sidewalks covered in broken glass?

I've spent eight years telling people I hate Hyde Park. Not the people, I always say, just the total lack of respectable dining establishments, the terrible coffee, pedestrians who throw themselves into oncoming traffic, the scam artists, the optional stop signs. I've seen guys pissing against beautiful new condos and I go swimming daily in a lake that's filled with millions of tons of sewage. I hate it all. I really do. But can you live somewhere for eight years without becoming that place? A friend introduced me recently, saying, "That's Majel. She goes to the U of C. We never understand a word she's saying." I talk Hyde Park.

The first day I came here, I was walking toward campus with my mother and we were being trailed by an older man who followed behind us for blocks muttering at half volume, "Bitches .... white bitchezzzz..." under his breath. But I go to New York now and it's too safe. I go to the north side and there are too many penny loafers. Where are all the weirdos? Where are the Impalas? Where are the BBQ/drug parties? My friend got his 1991 Camry stolen a few weeks ago. Who would steal a 1991 Camry? Hyde Park would.

Shit My Dad Says

An otherwise unnamed author, "Justin," keeps a rolling log of the ungentlemanly things that fly out of the face of his bigoted, racist dad's mouth. If you don't know about shitmydadsays, please consider going to this Twitter log and laughing your ass off.

Myths Men Tell Themselves About Women

Myth no. 1.
She likes me.

Women want you to like them. It doesn't mean they like you. A woman wants you to be attracted to her regardless of her feelings for you and if you somehow don't already know this, or believe this only goes for some women, I'm sorry to take the piss out of your protective blanket. It's true. Knowing a guy is into you is like losing a couple pounds sitting on your rear end doing nothing. It just feels great. So when you first meet her, a woman will treat you exactly the same regardless of your status with her. "I've never seen anything so hot in my life" will look and feel to you exactly the same as "Uh-oh, here comes so-and-so." You cannot tell. Don't tell yourself you can.

What is your game plan? Assume the worst. The first thing you should do with a woman, especially one you like, is give up on her immediately. Tell yourself it will never work out. This will do two things for you.

First, it will make you more yourself. If you assume you'll never be more than friends, you'll be relaxed. You'll be funnier, you'll be hotter. Your hands won't shake and you won't smile bat sh*t crazy love smiles.

Second, it will confuse her. You project "Hey, I just wanna be your friend," she reads "I'm not attracted to you." She will wonder why. She will wonder what she can do to make herself attractive to you. Your not being attracted to her gives you social capital. You must be too good for her. If you are too good for her, she will want you. Yes, we all have jobs now, and yes, we're all assertive and whatnot. Women want men to be dominant. Read into that if you have to. Even if she's still not immediately into you at this point, at least she'll respect you and that's a giant leap beyond where you were before.


Myth no. 2.
If I don't contact her she won't know I'm into her.

We know, dude. You're transparent. You've already blown it. You're into her. Now you have to pretend you're just a flirt. The worst thing you can do is to text her. You know this already, but I'll say it anyway. Make. Her. Wait. Do not contact her. Do not. If she contacts you, fine. Write back to her tomorrow. Don't wait a week, write her tomorrow but do not write her back within 15 seconds. Why? You need to show her that you barely have time for her. Become very busy. You are popular. You are in demand. You don't need her to complete your circle. You have millions of friends making demands on your time. She and her friends are getting drinks at Jimmy's on Friday? Oh, rats, you'd love to come but you have plans. Don't be specific. Be vague. Vague is hot. Maybe your mom is in town. Make it seem mysterious. (What could he possibly be doing? Wouldn't she like to know?!)

And, this is just icing on the cake, but feel free to make it seem like you're in a slightly dodgy relationship with another woman. Don't pretend to be taken. Just possibly unavailable. Maybe she's in Berlin. This will pique her curiosity. Even if she's totally not into you, if she can't tell if you're in a relationship or not, this raise your caché.

WARNING: If you know that people occasionally mistake you for being into guys, you cannot deploy the above strategy (giving off that you might be with someone) without dropping a line about "some ex-girlfriend." Make it quick, and move on. But if you have that metro thing going on, and you're dodgy about your private life, she may think you're into men. WRONG. Don't make this mistake. Women don't wanna accidentally fall for a gay guy.


Myth no. 3
If I become friends with her When Harry Met Sally will happen to me.

This is dangerous thinking. In fact, becoming friends with the woman you want in your bed is the worst idea you have ever had. If she likes you she does not want to be your friend. She wants to be in your bed. If a woman becomes your friend, she has already decided there is no relationship. A woman who becomes your friend is your friend because she didn't want to be your girlfriend.

Your only hope at this point is to lose ten pounds, get a tan and then disappear for weeks at a time without telling her why.

Myth no. 4
That was a meaningful smile.

You are not looking for smiles. Smiles are not for you. You are in failure-infested waters. You need proof. Proof does not include 1. laughing at your jokes, 2. emailing you or texting you a lot, even incessantly (friends do this), 3. wanting to hang out with you one on one. Sorry. You are still in friend zone, my friend.

Tokens of something-more:

1. She allowed herself to get wicked drunk in your presence.
This means her guard is down. Her guard might also be down because she regards you as a terrific friend, which would suck, so be careful.

2. She looks for excuses to be physically close to you.
You know what I mean. She doesn't move her shoulder away when you're close to her at the movie, and she does weird stuff like touching your hair or your face. You can also feel free to make slightly questionable moves at this point and see how she responds. Briefly put your hand on her lower back to indicate she should walk in front of you. Easy, because it also passes for gentility.

3. She looks extra awesome when you hang out.
Again, this could just be her wanting you to be attracted to her, so you're not in the clear but it's still a good sign.

4. Her friends like you.
Good for you. This means she talks about you. Her mom accidentally spills that you've been mentioned? What's UP! Home run! On the other hand, if you've been hanging out a month and her friends have no idea what your name is, go hang out with your skateboard. She's not into you.


Hope this helps. Now get out there and get hot and unavailable.