The Douchebag Bible (28 page)

theatrical acts like Marilyn Manson and Slipknot into the darker

bowels of the mainstream—but as oft-derided acts taken seriously

only by their hardcore fans and laughed off by most others.

When we look for the ultimate fulfillment of our most

closely held values—we can only ever see them perfectly realized

within the world of fiction. In movies and films and even (for

some of us) books there exists a moral simplicity that is innately

gratifying.

In film, Batman was transformed from a campy crime-

fighter in tights in 1966 to a rich boy out for a good time bullying

criminals in 1989 to a brooding bad ass with an unbreakable will

in 2008. The trend here was towards a more human rendition of

the character. Adam West’s Batman was silly, Michael Keaton’s

was dull and spoiled, Christian Bale’s was complex and believable.

By now some of you are wondering what the hell I’m

rambling about, so I’ll spell it out: our heroes are becoming

people who don’t want to be our heroes. Is there any doubt that

Axl Rose loves nothing more than being loved and adored and

worshipped by whatever remains of his pathetic fan-base? Kurt

Cobain, on the other hand, felt deeply conflicted about the idea of

being a role model. He didn’t really feel up to the task of being

anyone’s hero. Christian Bale and Christopher Nolan crafted a

similar Batman—one who felt unworthy of being a hero and

unsure if he could handle the pressures of being perceived as such.

For this reason, the no-heroes crowd respectfully pretends

to not have heroes. Even if they adore the ever-loving shit out of

someone, they act as though they don’t to spare their heroes a

little bit of the pressure of being heroes. It’s awful considerate of

them really.

The pro-heroes crowd is not so considerate, but their

heroes don’t want them to be. The heroes of pro-heroes people

are typically self-absorbed athletes with more muscles than

brains. It is always fun to watch as these heroes are fed a steady

diet of love from the public for years and years, feeding their

already morbidly obese egos, until one day some fact about them

comes to light or they start to lose their game and their

sycophantic devotees evaporate like a mirage. That’s when the

tabloids and the gossip shows (and, increasingly, the actual news)

get ahold of them. The Green Goblin from 2002’s Spiderman was

among the lamest realizations of an iconic comic book villain in

cinematic history, but I always found myself agreeing with his

contention that the one thing people love more than a hero is to

see a hero fall.

And before your criticize me for referencing superheroes

twice in one section, I’d remind you that I’m about as nerdy as a

person can be. As a teenager, acne accounted for more of my body

mass than penis did. Besides, this is a chapter about heroes—and

super ones are the most idealized of all.

This notion, by the way, fits perfectly into my idea that

athletes are our ultimate heroes. Who could ever be more athletic

than superheroes? They can run faster than speeding bullets and

leap tall buildings in a single bound! The superheroes are the

home team and all the supervillains are from rival schools. It fits

together eerily well—at least in my mind.

I don’t know if we can choose our heroes or if who we

admire is inexorably linked to our own values—wherever those

are derived from—but it seems to me that we should have deep

admiration for anyone who is especially talented at what they do.

Why can’t a man who can eat more hotdogs than most people be

a small-time hero? My stepfather is an excellent contractor and

carpenter—why does that skill entitle him to less hero worship

than a guy who can pluck a guitar well? Don’t we need roofs over

our heads and four walls to hold them up as much as we need

music to reverberate off of those walls?

Am I being too idealistic? I had better stop in that case.

Sorrow & Flatulence

“TJ, there’s something seriously wrong with your father.”

I’d be lying if I said panic was my first reaction to those

words. The sentence, and its meaning, made the room I was

occupying seem larger. It made me feel smaller.

I rose from my chair, jogged briskly to the bedroom where

my father lay moaning inhumanly. His face was purple, his eyes

glassy.

We turned him over. His beige pants were drenched with

urine. “Oh god,” shouted my stepmom. “He’s pissed himself.”

At that moment, we all knew he was going to die.

It was the unspoken obvious fact that filled the room like a

cloud of noxious gas. “Oh god, he’s pissed himself” was grief-

stricken wife speak for: “Of fuck, he’s a goner!”

We—me, my brother and my stepmom—managed to get

him onto the floor. She pumped his chest and blew into his mouth.

I called 9-1-1. The breaths she gave him seemed to bypass his

lungs entirely, simply inflating his stomach instead. They came

out in little bursts of cartoonish snoring that would have sounded

funny under different circumstances. Hell, they’re kind of funny

even in retrospect, albeit in a dark and haunting way.

Paramedics arrived quickly and worked on him for what

seemed liked 15-minutes but was probably a considerable shorter

period of time. They managed to restore his pulse. They were all

very casual. It was nothing they hadn’t seen a hundred times

before--just another family destroyed, just another person sucked

into oblivion, just another day at work.

I freely admit to hating them to this day, despite knowing