People pay thousands of dollars to have lasers shot at their eyes so they don't have to wear glasses. People put little pieces of plastic right on their eyes so they don't have to wear glasses. People hate glasses.

You can feel them on your face. You can see them on your face. They restrict your peripheral vision. You have to keep track of them. If you take them off you have to carry them with you. Your one pair has to compliment all your clothes. Wearing glasses makes it harder to wear sunglasses and be cool. Lots of people don't like how they look in glasses. Though imo some are in actuality very fetching. Disclaimer I don't wear glasses.

There are problems with the implementation of Google glass particularly. It's a pretty shitty product. Like hey check out this futuristic product you operate with your eyes except really you have to talk to it and stroke it with your finger. It doesn't fold up so you can't put it away. The obvious best use is to overlay graphical info over what you're looking at except the screen is stuck up in the corner so you have to look away from what's in front of you. The name is painfully try-hard-y.

(Somewhere in California a man makes a cleaving motion with his hand symbolizing the cool-ass bifurcation of the word glasses, leaving behind on one side the orphaned, useless es and on the other the singular elemental glass, born anew to navigate the metaverse and make people nervous you're filming them. I call them Google Glasses.)

But let's not focus too much on how Google fucked their glasses up particularly, more compelling is what a bad idea glasses computers ("heads up displays", my friend) are in general. Of of their two best uses one is wildly dangerous and the other makes one's fellow human beings paranoid and angry. Though probably the most obvious use is just to dick around on the internet while you walk. Which is also dangerous and stupid and lame and not even useful. I recommend inhabiting your body and being aware of your environment while you walk, which is genuinely good and borderline joyful and nothing to be so afraid of. Don't worry you will be reunited with your devices very soon and it'll be that much sweeter for their absence.

As mentioned augmented reality, overlaying graphical info onto one's field of vision, seems like it could be pretty dang sweet. If you want to see a depiction of this technology as envisioned by a sociopath you should watch this video . It's not hard to imagine how helpful it would be with driving directions and turning your life into a popup video. I seriously doubt anyone would let you gamble at pool while wearing them and definitely no girl you just met will ever come to your spacious, tasteful apartment.

So why did Google totally ignore augmented reality, instead choosing to place the display in the upper right hand corner of the glasses, requiring you to look up and to the right to use them? Pretty sure it's because augmented reality in your glasses is insanely dangerous. Imagine if those driving directions behaved at all like the gps on my iphone, with tons of laggy buggy bs, and steered you right into a farmers market, killing and maiming scores of innocents who were under the impression they could find meaning and fulfillment as an empowered participant in the farm to table lifestyle. Or maybe you're walking down the sidewalk and an open manhole cover is obscured by an ad for the store you're passing and you fall in and now you live in the sewer and are ruled by the rat king. This is not great technology for the health and longevity of your own or others bodies. And the thing is it doesn't even have to be a buggy to be problematic. It could function flawlessly and still be very dangerous because you only have so much attention and having to decipher all sorts extra info while still navigating the phenomenal world is just a lot to ask and an obvious recipe for disaster.

Augmented reality on a phone could maybe work. You hold your phone in front of the statue of liberty and it displays some cool cutaway blueprints of the interior structure. Even though phones are also distracting and dangerous they have one key safety feature that glasses don't, their default state is off. You have to make an effort to hold a phone up to your face. As soon as your attention is diverted by a loud noise and/or an evocative flavor the phone automatically drops away and is no longer distracting you. This has a corollary with Google glasses other big deficiency in that when you're using your phone people know you're using your phone.

We have all I'm sure been dreaming since childhood of how sick it would be if we could take pictures just by blinking our eyes and also have earrings that summoned a holographic rock band by touching them and saying a catch phrase. Or what if everything we saw, our whole life, was automatically recorded (this would be wild embarrassing just fyi). These are undoubtably super fn rad ideas and the fact that they're on the verge of being real is very exciting. Except of course for the subjects of our personal documentaries, the people being recorded, are maybe not so amped about it. We have to share the world with others and it turns out all of them prefer not to be recorded without their consent. That consent often, with friends especially, is more opt out than opt in. Someone holds their phone up for a photo and whoever doesn't want to be in it has a split second to take evasive action. The protocol with strangers is trickier, like maybe it's okay to take a picture that they're in, but walking right up to someone and taking a picture of them is could be grounds for a confrontation.

So what happens when you're wearing a device that might be recording at all times? Unsurprisingly people do not like it. (lol at her being all they were accusing me of recording them when I wasn't, cut to footage of people accusing her of recording them.)

Many argue that this is just a standard conservative fearful response to new technology and that in time everyone will be used to being recorded at all times. But the thing is photography is really not at all a new technology. It's been around for everyone's entire lives and we still don't like being recorded without our consent. It's considered a violation of our right to just be ourselves drunk in a bar on a sunday morning without someone freezing that in time and maybe posting it to facebook where our bosses and fellow congregants can see. And it's even more fundamental than worrying about footage getting out. There's a feeling that unwanted recording violates out basic sovereignty as human beings. If you don't understand that chances are you're probably not trying too hard to understand where the humans who are not yourself are coming from.

Which brings us to Google. They have a strong futurist bent. They're fascinated with sci-fi visioning of our technological future. Which has an aspect of irony since their main thing wasn't the first of its kind and the method they used to make money off it was invented by someone else. Their other huge success is an inferior facsimile of a revolutionary product. They are undoubtedly a brilliant company at what they do best, which is getting a bunch of data and making incremental changes based on being better at computer science than everyone else.

The thing about that approach is it doesn't work for coming up with new ideas. That takes a more intuitive and empathetic way of looking at things. It's hard for a company to be good at more than one thing. It's usually better to just go with your strength. That requires self-knowledge. It takes admitting that your not good at most things. Google's leadership is outrageously successful. I'm sure people tell them they're visionaries every day, which incidentally is maybe not even a real thing in and of itself. It's hard to resist that empty praise and focus on your core skill.

If you look at what what Google says about their glasses you can see that they're not even that good at performing the typical thought leader routine, let alone leading actual thoughts. They don't seem sure what Google glasses are for or about. They chum the water with a bunch of boiler plate tech self-actualization marketing talk about being creative and exploring or whatever and being bold and sharing. And, if you dare to direct your gaze toward their deepest degraded confusion, you'll see their honest too goodness ceo of Google make the mortifying argument for their glasses based on the assertion that phones are emasculating. He manages to be simultaneously simple-minded and baffling. Like the Google dude is laying some entry level gender police trip on you and the thing he's so worried about sapping your manhood is holding a phone in your hand? I feel bad for this guy. He really doesn't seem cut out for the role. He's just flailing. Like maybe this approach works for selling pickup trucks or for jr high bullying. But cyborg glasses? Dispositionally he seems much more the bullied than the bully, internalizing the abuse of his tormentors. Not sure he knows who he is. Probably not the person to lead us toward the light.

You can see in Google Glasses a certainty that something must be next. There's going to be a new disruptive technology and they're gonna find it and put ads on it. Setting aside how funny and not revolutionary it is that their big idea is to put a computer in an existing object, I don't think this is the right way to look at it. The vast majority of people don't care if something is new and super technological, they care whether it helps them or not. It's easier for google as a company to understand technology than it is for them to understand people. Which is why they aren't ever on the cutting edge of popular technology.

On the other side apple is the best at coming up with the devices and the intuitive interfaces everyone loves. But then when you look at the super computers doing things behind the scenes stuff that Google is good at apple sucks very bad. I wanted to mention apple not just because they're the obvious counterpoint to Google but so I could complain about how when I updated my ipad it caused my iphone to email texts to people when I texted them? Why? Like that's very hard to even explain it makes so little sense.

Google glass is booty (and so is icloud). Peace be with you.

PS LOL LOL

This post originally appeared on Thought Follower, with the express permission of Joe Schoech. You can follow Joe on Twitter, if you want.

Photo: Getty

A cool feature of strong cold fronts as they move over open water is the large area of cloud streets they can leave behind. As the cold, dry air interacts with the warmer ocean water, it creates narrow bands of convection (rising and sinking air) parallel to the direction of the wind. If conditions are right, these narrow bands of convection sometimes appear in the form of long, thin rows of cumulus clouds known as "horizontal convective rolls," or cloud streets.

The above image was taken on March 11, 2014, just after the heavy snowfall that impacted much of the Great Lakes and northeastern United States (snow is seen covering much of the ground). Those same cloud streets over the Atlantic are still present today, as witnessed by the below satellite image taken at 115PM EDT, just 30 minutes prior to this post.

[Images via MODIS and MSFC]

What does T H E F U T U R E hold for us? If we are lucky, it holds unspeakably horrible new punishment technology. Aeon Magazine explores the future of jailing:

As biotech companies pour billions into life extension technologies, some have suggested that our cruelest criminals could be kept alive indefinitely, to serve sentences spanning millennia or longer. Even without life extension, private prison firms could one day develop drugs that make time pass more slowly, so that an inmate's 10-year sentence feels like an eternity. One way or another, humans could soon be in a position to create an artificial hell.

Aeon's Ross Andersen interviews Oxford philosopher Rebecca Roache, who, with a team of scholars, "has begun thinking about the ways futuristic technologies might transform punishment." Like for example: Should we imprison Hitler, forever, in F U T U R E J A I L?

[Andersen:] Suppose we eventually learn to put off death indefinitely, and that we extend this treatment to prisoners. Is there any crime that would justify eternal imprisonment? Take Hitler as a test case. Say the Soviets had gotten to the bunker before he killed himself, and say capital punishment was out of the question – would we have put him behind bars forever?

Roache: It's tough to say. If you start out with the premise that a punishment should be proportional to the crime, it's difficult to think of a crime that could justify eternal imprisonment. You could imagine giving Hitler one term of life imprisonment for every person killed in the Second World War. That would make for quite a long sentence, but it would still be finite. The endangerment of mankind as a whole might qualify as a sufficiently serious crime to warrant it. As you know, a great deal of the research we do here at the Oxford Martin School concerns existential risk. Suppose there was some physics experiment that stood a decent chance of generating a black hole that could destroy the planet and all future generations. If someone deliberately set up an experiment like that, I could see that being the kind of supercrime that would justify an eternal sentence.

Is rehabilitation possible over a span of "eternal life"?

Even if your body makes it to 1,000 years, the thinking goes, that body is actually inhabited by a succession of persons over time rather than a single continuous person. And so, if you put someone in prison for a crime they committed at 40, they might, strictly speaking, be an entirely different person at 940. And that means you are effectively punishing one person for a crime committed by someone else. Most of us would think that unjust.

Also, and this is not in the article, and only tangentially related, but there is a good chance we will all be re-instantiated as computer programs, identical to our actual consciousnesses and therefore for all intents and purposes equivalent to "ourselves," by a god-like super-intelligence, solely for the purpose of eternal torture as punishment for insufficiently abetting the super-intelligence's development during our lifetimes. Bring on T H E F U T U R E!

[image via Shutterstock]

Bill Gates is a technocrat. A very, very rich technocrat. His charity work will probably save millions of lives. But, as a new interview with him reveals, he's really not much of a progressive at all.

Jeff Goodel's lengthy new Rolling Stone interview with Gates delves deep into Gates' greatest accomplishment: his $36 billion foundation, and its meaningful, data-driven contributions to public health and anti-poverty initiatives. But it also does a good job proving that—although many people reflexively assume that someone so concerned about helping the poor must be a progressive liberal—Gates is anything but. The most prominent example:

RS: Thanks to Edward Snowden, who has leaked tens of thousands of NSA documents, we are. Do you consider him a hero or a traitor?

Gates: I think he broke the law, so I certainly wouldn't characterize him as a hero. If he wanted to raise the issues and stay in the country and engage in civil disobedience or something of that kind, or if he had been careful in terms of what he had released, then it would fit more of the model of "OK, I'm really trying to improve things." You won't find much admiration from me.

Gates objects to the very idea of leaking classified information about government surveillance, because "the specific techniques they use become unavailable if they're discussed in detail," a position that could be comfortably espoused by the head of the Senate Intelligence Committee.

And here is what Gates, the world's richest man, had to say about income inequality:

Well, now you're getting into sort of complicated issues. In general, on taxation-type things, you'd think of me as a Democrat. That is, when tax rates are below, say, 50 percent, I believe there often is room for additional taxation. And I've been very upfront on the need to increase estate taxes. Particularly given the medical obligations that the state is taking on and the costs that those have over time. You can't have a rigid view that all new taxes are evil. Yes, they have negative effects, but I'm like Krugman in that if you expect the state to do these things, they are going to cost money.

Should the state be playing a greater role in helping people at the lowest end of the income scale? Poverty today looks very different than poverty in the past. The real thing you want to look at is consumption and use that as a metric and say, "Have you been worried about having enough to eat? Do you have enough warmth, shelter? Do you think of yourself as having a place to go?" The poor are better off than they were before, even though they're still in the bottom group in terms of income.

He goes on to criticize the lack of efficiency in government programs for the poor. Moderately liberal? Yes. But he is no George Soros. He's not even as far left as Warren Buffett, when you get right down to it. A $36 billion foundation and a call for a 50% tax rate is admirable, in isolation. The same things are somewhat less admirable in the context of a $76 billion fortune.

Gates' gods are not political, but technical. He worships efficiency and measurability, not ideals. And he evinces the sunny optimism (about technology's ability to fix climate change without serious political changes, and about the inevitability of collective human progress in general) of a man free of personal worries. To Gates, the government is just another stakeholder instrumental to his plans, not an overarching force in life that must be held in check by an empowered citizenry.

A kindhearted technocrat with more means than ideals is not, of course, the worst thing the world's richest man could be. It's also not the best.

[Photo: AP]

On Tuesday, under pressure from the New Jersey auto dealer lobby to protect its monopoly, the New Jersey Motor Vehicle Commission, composed of political appointees of the Governor, ended your right to purchase vehicles at a manufacturer store within the state.

Governor Christie had promised that this would be put to a vote of the elected state legislature, which is the appropriate way to change the law. When it became apparent to the auto dealer lobby that this approach would not succeed, they cut a backroom deal with the Governor to circumvent the legislative process and pass a regulation that is fundamentally contrary to the intent of the law.

It is worth examining the history of these laws to understand why they exist, as the auto dealer franchise laws were originally put in place for a just cause and are now being twisted to an unjust purpose. Many decades ago, the incumbent auto manufacturers sold franchises to generate capital and gain a salesforce. The franchisees then further invested a lot of their money and time in building up the dealerships.

That's a fair deal and it should not be broken. However, some of the big auto companies later engaged in pressure tactics to get the franchisees to sell their dealerships back at a low price. The franchisees rightly sought protection from their state legislatures, which resulted in the laws on the books today throughout the United States (these laws are not present anywhere else in the world).

The intent was simply to prevent a fair and longstanding deal between an existing auto company and its dealers from being broken, not to prevent a new company that has no franchisees from selling directly to consumers. In most states, the laws are reasonable and clear. In a handful of states, the laws were written in an overzealous or ambiguous manner. When all auto companies sold through franchises, this didn't really matter.

However, when Tesla came along as a new company with no existing franchisees, the auto dealers, who possess vastly more resources and influence than Tesla, nonetheless sought to force us to sell through them.

The reason that we did not choose to do this is that the auto dealers have a fundamental conflict of interest between promoting gasoline cars, which constitute virtually all of their revenue, and electric cars, which constitute virtually none. Moreover, it is much harder to sell a new technology car from a new company when people are so used to the old. Inevitably, they revert to selling what's easy and it is game over for the new company.

The evidence is clear: when has an American startup auto company ever succeeded by selling through auto dealers? The last successful American car company was Chrysler, which was founded almost a century ago, and even they went bankrupt a few years ago, along with General Motors.

Since the founding of Chrysler, there have been dozens of failures, Tucker and DeLorean being simply the most well-known. In recent years, electric car startups, such as Fisker, Coda, and many others, attempted to use auto dealers and all failed.

An even bigger conflict of interest with auto dealers is that they make most of their profit from service, but electric cars require much less service than gasoline cars. There are no oil, spark plug or fuel filter changes, no tune-ups and no smog checks needed for an electric car. Also, all Tesla Model S vehicles are capable of over-the-air updates to upgrade the software, just like your phone or computer, so no visit to the service center is required for that either.

Going a step further, I have made it a principle within Tesla that we should never attempt to make servicing a profit center. It does not seem right to me that companies try to make a profit off customers when their product breaks. Overcharging people for unneeded servicing (often not even fixing the original problem) is rampant within the industry and happened to me personally on several occasions when I drove gasoline cars. I resolved that we would endeavor never to do such a thing at Tesla, as described in the Tesla service blog post I wrote last year.

Why Did They Claim That This Change Was Necessary?

The rationale given for the regulation change that requires auto companies to sell through dealers is that it ensures "consumer protection". If you believe this, Gov. Christie has a bridge closure he wants to sell you! Unless they are referring to the mafia version of "protection", this is obviously untrue. As anyone who has been through the conventional auto dealer purchase process knows, consumer protection is pretty much the furthest thing from the typical car dealer's mind.

There are other ways to assess the premise that auto dealers take better care of customers than Tesla does. Consumer Reports conducts an annual survey of 1.1 million subscribers, which factors in quality, reliability and consumer satisfaction. The Tesla Model S was the top overall pick of any vehicle in the world, scoring 99 out of 100. This is the highest score any car has ever received. By comparison, in the industry report card, Ford, which sells their cars through franchise dealers, received a score of 50. BMW, which makes competing premium sedans, received a score of 66.

Consumers across the country have also voiced their opinion on the sales model they prefer. In North Carolina, a Triangle Business Journal poll found that 97 percent of people polled said Tesla should be allowed to sell cars directly. A poll by the Austin Business Journal showed that 86 percent of respondents were in favor of direct sales, and in a Los Angeles Times poll 99 percent of respondents came to the same conclusion. These aren't polls that we commissioned and there are many more like them. We have not seen a single poll that didn't result in an overwhelming majority saying they preferred the direct model to the traditional dealer model.

Democracy is supposed to reflect the will of the people. When a politician acts in a manner so radically opposed to the will of the people who elected him, the only explanation is that there are other factors at play.

Going Forward

Some reassurances are also in order. Until at least April 1, everything is business as usual for Tesla in New Jersey. It should also be noted that this regulation deals only with sales, so our service centers will not be affected. Our stores will transition to being galleries, where you can see the car and ask questions of our staff, but we will not be able to discuss price or complete a sale in the store. However, that can still be done at our Manhattan store just over the river in Chelsea or our King of Prussia store near Philadelphia.

Most importantly, even after April 1, you will still be able to order vehicles from New Jersey for delivery in New Jersey on our TeslaMotors.com website.

We are evaluating judicial remedies to correct the situation. Also, if you believe that your right to buy direct at a Tesla store should be restored, please contact your state senator & assemblyman: www.njleg.state.nj.us/districts/districtnumbers.asp.

Finally, we would like to thank the many people who showed up in Trenton on Tuesday to support Tesla and speak out against the MVC's back-door tactics in passing this regulation change without public consultation or due process. It was an amazing response at very short notice and much appreciated.

(Note: This post by Elon Musk first appeared on Tesla Motors' blog and was republished here with permission. - P.G.)

H/T Alex for the image idea!

[Election commission workers prepare for a referendum at a polling station in Crimea, Ukraine, on Friday. Crimea plans to hold a referendum on Sunday that will ask residents if they want the territory to become part of Russia. Image via Andrew Lubimov/AP.]

On Friday, Young Lee, a co-founder of frozen yogurt company Pinkberry, was sentenced to seven years in state prison for beating a homeless man with a tire iron.

Last November, a jury found Lee guilty of attacking Donald Bolding with a tire iron in June 2011. From the Los Angeles Times:

Bolding flashed a tattoo of a stick-figure couple having sex to the people in Lee's car, which included his fiancee. Lee drove away, then returned to the East Hollywood street with another man who'd been in the car. He then beat Bolding, who suffered a broken left forearm and several cuts to the head.

After he was convicted, a judge ordered Lee to remain in jail without bail until his sentencing, in part because Lee threatened David Lee (no relation), one of the state's key witnesses.

"Do you remember the moment when David Lee stood on the witness stand and told us he'd been threatened?" Deputy Dist. Atty. Bobby Zoumberakis asked the jury during closing arguments, according to the Los Angeles Times. "'I'm going to cut the throat of your mother, your wife, your daughter and you.' And remember how the air left the room because you could tell how scared David Lee was?"

Young Lee's seven-year sentence was the maximum allowed.

[Image via AP]

The Veronica Mars movie is out today. It's a strange thing to talk about. Every piece about it, including this one apparently, must talk about how it only happened because fans of the original Veronica Mars television show went on Kickstarter and supported it . So it was never designed to be an independent cultural product. The chief imperative was to Give the Fans What They Want.

What's the relationship between what the fans want and what the general public might want? The original program, about an uber-sarcastic girl detective in a rich-people California town, was relatively low-rated, after all, and it was canceled way back in 2007.

But Veronica Mars happened to be one of the best things this Golden Age of television ever produced, in my opinion, even if that is still not as widely shared an opinion as my fellow fans and I might like it to be. Partly it was doomed by its time and place of origin to miss most people's list of Great TV Shows. It ran on the CW and its predecessor, UPN, not on HBO or Showtime or the other aspiring-auteur networks, and it aired long before our present era of Taking Television Seriously and Writing Review-Essays About It in the New York Review of Books.

The movie would probably do more to remedy that if it could survive as a standalone, something you could take an ignorant friend to as a gateway drug. Unfortunately, the same fans-as-patrons movement that made the movie happen also limited its outreach potential. So, I mean, yes, I've seen the movie, and yes, as designed, it did elicit every bit of affection I have for the show. But it did that without attending much to the questions of plot and dialogue and whether this was really a story that needed to be told, as a story.

In other words: I could see, watching it, that this movie doesn't itself make much of a case for the greatness of the cultural event that was Veronica Mars. So—with the show currently available on Amazon Prime, in addition to the usual illegal sources, for those who might be ready to discover it—let me give it a shot.

The crucial thing to understand was that everything and nothing about Veronica Mars was about high school. We have had enough depictions of high school in popular culture to last us a lifetime. Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Freaks and Geeks, My So-Called Life: All cast the same hook into the old wounds of adolescence.

Or, for what seems like an awful lot of people, the not-so-old wounds. This was the advantage Veronica Mars had over their other shows. It knew that one of the more frustrating lessons of adult life is that in many ways the intense stratification of high school never really ends. This was a show about high school that was talking to the grown-ups who still feel stuck and angry.

The "teen noir" conceit of Veronica Mars meant that from the get-go, the problems facing Veronica (Kristen Bell) weren't really about popularity. As outcasts go, when the series opens, she's relatively new to the status. To use the phraseology of another great tale of high school, The Outsiders, she was a Soc who very suddenly found herself a Greaser. And as such, the dislike her classmates have for her has less to do with her outfits than with class and violence and power. Not in the implied sort of way that a generation of cultural-studies majors have spent years unearthing and arguing in academic essays. The subtext is text, here.

The backbone of the first season of Veronica Mars is a murder mystery: Veronica—whose father is a newly deposed county sheriff turned private investigator—is looking for the killer of her best friend Lilly. The death explodes Veronica previous life. The murder investigation brings Veronica's father down, drives her unstable mother to disappear in the night, breaks her up with her stable-if-sort-of-boring boyfriend. To make matters worse, not long after Lilly's death, Veronica is herself drugged and likely raped. All this becomes clear within the first episode.

From there the series never really got less violent or less driven by stories of sexual assault. What continued to ratchet up the stakes for Veronica over the course of the first two seasons was the way the violence became more and more clearly entangled with official corruption in the town she was living in.

Veronica Mars's setting in the fictional, Orange County-ish Neptune, California, meant that the show's palette was all sunshine and candy colors, styled not unlike a catalog for a line of teen girl clothing. But underneath all is dark, and everyone is out for themselves. If sometimes this makes the plot byzantine, the interconnectedness of all the suffering has a wonderful way of saying, graduation won't end this. It won't.

Does all that sound too cynical? Unrealistically so? I guess I am tired after years of debating culture on the internet of addressing this question of whether life is really like it is in the movies, so to speak. There are nuances in Veronica Mars. Not all the adults are bad—Veronica's father, Keith (Enrico Colatoni), qualifies for sainthood on an episode-by-episode basis. Some people even change. Even the most boorish, untrustworthy, violent of Veronica's classmates, Logan Echolls (Jason Dohring) eventually morphs into an excellent boyfriend. Other people, just as in life, don't learn a thing, go on being the clichés they really are, right through college and into the grave. That's close enough to reality for me.

It's important to stick to those first two seasons in making the argument for Veronica Mars because the third loses this thread, somehow. Veronica herself graduates high school and there is something about removing the characters from that setting that always hurts these shows. The world outside high school at least likes to tell itself it's more chaotic, loose, disconnected. Without the hypocrisy-in-microcosm of Neptune High, the hypocrisy of a college, or of the town proper, just didn't pack the same punch.

The only reason to watch the third season is because by then you've become addicted to Veronica herself. Usually in these genre shows the sidekicks have a better claim on the audience's affection than the hero, but not so in Veronica's case. Her quips are wonderful, but they are not the whole appeal either. They are a lovely dress on a very bruised and angry sort of person. Because Veronica, like all the other creatures on her show, is not left unmarked by all she's seen. Trauma does not conclude at the end of the hour. And the nicest thing I can say about the Veronica Mars movie, without spoiling it one bit, is that it turns out she's still surviving everything that happened to her.

In that, I think, is the series' actual brilliance. Even before Dan Savage formalized the phrase, we have long been fond of telling high school students that it "gets better." When I was a kid, and people told me this, I thought they meant that people in adult life would be kinder, nicer, less driven by arbitrary sorts of status. But I wish we'd make it clearer to kids that the way it actually "gets better" is that you just get used to the idea that cruelty is a given. The edge gets duller. You learn that even some of the most egregious forms of it are survivable. You learn there are things that can keep you off the floor: a good dad, good friends. And if you are the kind of person who has none of those things, at least you can take some comfort, in a very profound way, from a good television show like Veronica Mars.

Minister, Christian broadcaster, and person who is still alive Pat Robertson is an expert on the methods by which demons possess humans: Specifically, horror movies and (maybe) porn.

On the 700 Club this week, Robertson told a second-hand tale of demonic antics, wherein a teenage girl had made some underworld-friendly viewing choices and inadvertently given evil spirits permission to enter her body:

"A few years ago, I heard about a teenage girl who was demon-possessed. And people began to deal with the demon, and try to cast it out. And you know what the demon said? 'I have permission.' And the permission was granted when this child had gone to some double-X-rated movie or whatever it was, and had allowed this thing to come into her."

Because he was answering a question about horror films (and whether watching them makes God stop protecting you from random accidents), it's not clear what Robertson meant by "double-X-rated movie." He could have been talking about porn, or he could be a confused old man. Or both.

Although Robertson thinks low-carb diets are a violation of God's principles, gays spread AIDS on purpose, and grown-up movies cause demon possession, there's one issue on which he's progressive: legalizing weed.

[H/T: Uproxx]

An ant is not the size of a man. Yet can a man with no eyes build a maze? A man is not the size of an ant. Yet can an ant build, for example, an automobile factory, or a yurt? I read these things in a book.

The koan: "Killing"

Gasan instructed his adherents one day: "Those who speak against killing and who desire to spare the lives of all conscious beings are right. It is good to protect even animals and insects. But what about those persons who kill time, what about those who are destroying wealth, and those who destroy political economy? We should not overlook them. Furthermore, what of the one who preaches without enlightenment? He is killing Buddhism."

The enlightenment: When informed that there is no evidence that time, wealth, political economy, or Buddhism are biologically "alive," Gasan fell silent for several minutes. During that time, he was cut from the debate team.

"But I love the debate team," he said. Sorry.

This has been "Zen Koans Explained." Never say so.

[Photo: Shutterstock]

In a Thursday interview on Fox Business channel, former reality "star" Kristin Cavallari admitted that she and her husband, Chicago Bears quarterback Jay Cutler, do not believe in vaccinating their children due to autism fears.

The former Laguna Beach star surprised host Lisa Kennedy Montgomery when she revealed she had chosen not to vaccinate her son because of a statistic she read sometime, somewhere:

There is a pediatric group called Homestead, or shoot, Homestead or Home First, now I'm pregnancy brain I gotta confuse them, but they've never vaccinated any of their children and they've never had one case of autism. And now, one in 88 boys is autistic which is a really scary statistic.

On Fox & Friends Friday morning, Cavallari continued to defend her anti-vac position, but admitted her harmful decision was an accidental disclosure and was not something she "wanted to publicly come out and say."

But now being forced to defend her choice, the pregnant Cavallari cited "books" as her rationale:

"Listen, to each their own," she said. "I understand both sides of it. I've ready too many books about autism and there's some scary statistics out there. It's our personal choice, and, you know, if you're really concerned about your kid get them vaccinated."

The scariest statistic of them all? Thanks to idiots like Cavallari and Cutler, there's currently an outbreak of measles in New York City.

[Image via AP]

Wesley Warren, Jr., famous for a scrotum that weighed as much as 132 pounds before he reduced it with surgery, has died at age 49. He recently suffered two heart attacks and had been hospitalized for weeks due to complications from diabetes.

A friend of Warren's told the Las Vegas Review-Journal, "He had infections that I think were brought on by his diabetes and then he had those heart attacks." The friend said Warren's surgery last April played no role in his death.

Due his condition, Warren, who weighed 300 pounds before his scrotum started expanding at a rate of 3 pounds per month, was unable to urinate normally, or to have sex. He had to wear hooded sweatshirts upside down as pants.

Warren's strange case garnered worldwide attention thanks to appearances on the Howard Stern Show, Tosh.0, and a 2013 documentary on the U.K.'s Channel 4, The Man With the 10-Stone Testicles. The publicity led to several offers to perform corrective surgery, including one from Dr. Mehmet Oz, which Warren turned down because he was afraid Oz would botch the operation.

He eventually found a doctor at UC Irvine who performed the surgery for free, on the condition that Nevada Medicaid would pay for use of the hospital. The surgery happened before the state approved it, though, and Nevada denied coverage for Warren's surgery and his post-operative care.

Warren consistently denied that he flaunted his condition for attention.

"Who would want to live like this?" he asked the Review-Journal before his surgery last year.

[H/T: TMZ, Photo Credit: Channel 4]

Just after it vanished from civilian radar, Flight 370 reportedly climbed past 45,000 feet—well above the plane's approved altitude—and changed courses several times in a deliberate manner, as if it were still being steered by a pilot.

Citing American officials and others familiar with the investigation, the New York Times reports that radar data collected by the Malaysian military shows the plane's rapid ascent, followed a turn to the west. The plane then descended to 23,000 feet before changing course again, flying northwest over the Strait of Malacca in the direction of the Indian Ocean. From the Times:

The combination of altitude changes and at least two significant course corrections could have a variety of explanations, including an intentional diversion by a pilot or a hijacker, or uneven flying because a disabled crew.

The erratic movements of the aircraft after it diverted course and flew over the country also raise questions about why the military did not respond in real time to the flight emergency. Malaysian officials have acknowledged that military radar may have picked up the plane, but have said they took no action because it did not appear hostile.

There's also this terrifying bit of information:

An Asia-based pilot of a Boeing 777-200, who asked not to be identified because he was not authorized to speak to reporters, said an ascent above the plane's service limit of 43,100 feet, along with a depressurized cabin, could have rendered the passengers and crew unconscious, and could be a deliberate maneuver by a pilot or hijacker.

Meanwhile, CNN is now reporting that the plane probably crashed in one of two areas: in the Indian Ocean or in the Bay of Bengal off the coast of India. The network also mentions a third theory, based on a Reuters report released this morning.

Yet another theory is taking shape about what might have happened to missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370: Maybe it landed in a remote Indian Ocean island chain.

[Image via Getty]

Last March, Sheryl Sandberg launched Lean In, a non-profit offshoot of her best-selling book. At the time of the organization's launch, it was too early to tell exactly who would benefit from the politically ambitious Facebook executive's top-down empowerment agenda. But now, one year later—after a high-profile publicity tour, a sworn commitment to diversifying stock photos, and the world's only meh Beyoncé video—and Sandberg still doesn't have a good answer.

Her latest initiative, a public service campaign to ban the word "bossy," also seems unlikely to make a meaningful change. It's the linguistic equivalent of Lean In's war against negative stereotypes of women, using stock photography as its only weapon. In both cases, Lean In has properly identified areas where a headline-grabbing, mainstream organization could make a difference—and then prescribed the most superficial corporate salve possible.

Lean In announced the #banbossy campaign earlier this week in partnership with Girls Scouts of America—coinciding perfectly with the one-year anniversary of Sandberg's organization. Banning "bossy," they argue, will help girls close "the confidence gap" and encourage them toward leadership roles. The project began with TV-ready PSA featuring Sandberg, Condoleezza Rice, her majesty Queen Bey, Jennifer Garner, Jane Lynch, Diane Von Furstenberg, and the U.S. Secretary of Education.

Sandberg had the power to marshall all those celebrities and policy influencers (and the pulpit that comes with it) and she squandered that capital fixating on one word. A word that already comes with its own radically feminist music video from Kelis, exemplary career advice from Nicki Minaj, and a role model like Tina Fey.

The confidence gap is real and it is insidious. Inculcating gender norms starts early and contributes to lack of women in leadership. I don't think anyone ever called me bossy, but the message was clear: tone yourself down, don't be too assertive, don't be cocky, people will like you more if your personality is palatable, speaking of, you should really focus on being liked. In the same vein, I don't recall any aspirational images of women in the workplace, much less women who looked like me.

But progress has never come through PSA, especially one with such a meager target. If no one in the world ever said the word bossy again, it would be hard to tell the difference. As Anne Friedman put it in The Cut:

"[that's] why it's so frustrating to watch Lean In try to expand girls' options by restricting the way we talk about them. It's counterintuitive, and it makes feminists look like thought police rather than the expansive forward-thinkers we really are."

Let's say this unmemorable commercial, which might as well be followed with "The More You Know" jingle, did somehow manage to narrow the confidence gap. Even so, these young women are going to matriculate into a staggering wage gap, particularly within the tech industry where gatekeepers like Sandberg advise ambitious female workers to take a seat in the back of a startup rocketship, no matter what the pay.

Shanley Kane put it bluntly on Model View Culture:

"The ultimate message of Lean In ideology is transparent in the name itself: Stay in the machine. Work for the machine. Appease the machine."

I imagine other women, like me, reserved judgement over Lean In's stock photo project (a partnership with Getty launched in February), partly because you don't want to hold back a step in the right direction. You won't see Sandberg at Occupy Menlo Park, but her mission has always been practical, focused, and vital: getting more women in leadership roles. In both cases, Sandberg located pain points along that route.

But here's how the New York Times described Lean In's stock photography solution to oppressing stereotypes:

The new library of photos shows professional women as surgeons, painters, bakers, soldiers and hunters. There are girls riding skateboards, women lifting weights and fathers changing babies' diapers. Women in offices wear contemporary clothes and hairstyles and hold tablets or smartphones — a far cry from the typical stock photos of women in 1980s power suits with a briefcase.

With so many resources and so much access at Sandberg's disposal, it feels like a far cry from consequential.

One could argue that that Sandberg has made more of difference than other tech executives (maybe), that these are the kind of watered-down campaigns that happens when you partner with corporations (not necessarily), and that we haven't seen the full scope of what Lean In will do (true).

However, Sandberg has not shied away from utopian rhetoric about "changing the future" and promoting "equality," like this page about empowerment in college through "lean in" circles. Sandberg's foundation claims that there are 14,000 circles globally, but doesn't say how many people continue to come back to these "Alcoholics Anonymous fused with Girl Scouts" groups. One year later, I don't even know anyone who has been invited to join, on or off campus. Maybe Silicon Valley should ban the phrase "world change."

To contact the author of this post, please email nitasha@gawker.com.

In a non-shocking twist to the never-ending Chris Brown saga, Brown is currently headed back to his home away from home because he's been thrown out of rehab.

TMZ reports that Brown, who has been serving a court-ordered rehab stint for several months, was kicked out of a Malibu facility this morning for violating "internal rules." Whatever Brown did, it allegedly did not involve "violence or drugs." And while sources also tell TMZ that Brown did have "an inappropriate relationship" with a female worker at the beginning of March, the alleged affair also has nothing to do with Friday's expulsion.

Because getting kicked out of rehab violates the terms set by the judge, Brown was picked up by Los Angeles County Sheriff's deputies this afternoon and transported to jail.

[Image via AP]

This week in what the fuck is happening in Florida, a murderer who escaped a Kansas maximum security prison in 1977 was finally apprehended again while he lived his new life as an air conditioner repair man in Deerfield Beach, Florida. His wife had "no idea" he was living under a fake name.

James Robert Jones (formerly known as Bruce Walter Keith) was convicted of assault and murder of a fellow soldier in Fort Dix, NJ in 1974 and sent to Kansas for a 23-year sentence.

Jones, 59, was one of the Army's 15 most-wanted fugitives after his 1977 escape from the Kansas prison dubbed "The Castle" for its large walls and tower keeps.

His Florida neighbors were shocked at the news, when law enforcement identified the fugitive's face by modern facial-recognition technology.

Tammy Deangelis, who lives next door, said: "We would all get together. It's a friendly quiet neighborhood. Good neighbors. Didn't even know he was in the military. If we had any air conditioning problems, we would go to him."

Jones' future sentence is unclear: he could face escape charges in addition to his past murder charges. When he was caught again, he reportedly told police officers, "I knew this would catch up with me someday."

The message? Never trust anyone in Florida.

[Image via Deerfield Beach/AP]

In the face of emerging radar data and a week of fruitless searching, Malaysia Prime Minister Najib Razak announced on Saturday that his country believes missing Malaysia Airlines Flight 370 was deliberately taken off course.

Where unnamed officials earlier in the week leaked that the plane might have flown for four hours after its last official communication, Malaysian authorities said today that the Boeing 777 could have traveled for as much seven hours after its last known position.

The official confirmation by Malaysian authorities that the working hypothesis now revolves around hijacking/sabotage instead of mechanical or pilot error links with news reports from the past few days that stated the plane had ascended after its last communication and traveled along an established western route across the Indian Ocean.

Still, Malaysian authorities did not say where exactly they think the plane ended up. Though all leaked information since the disappearance has indicated that Flight 370 headed west after it vanished from radar, Malaysia released a map today that allows for the possibility that it actually headed south.

Malaysian govnt document showing #MH370's two potential routes. pic.twitter.com/O1mbZohrxO

— Chico Harlan (@chicoharlan) March 15, 2014

Those red lines signify the two routes officials believe the plane followed. The northern route takes the plane over mainland China and up towards Kyrgyzstan and Kazakhstan. The southern route would have taken Flight 370 past the western coast of Australia and over the part of the Indian Ocean where basically nothing exists.

At his press conference, Najib said that his country has "refocused their investigation on crew and passengers aboard" the aircraft. That digging has started with the plane's captain, 53-year-old Zaharie Ahmad Shah, whose home was searched shortly after the completion of Najib's remarks.

Whoever flew the plane away from its intended destination had a deep working knowledge of the Boeing 777. The Wall Street Journal reports that disabling the plane's transponder would have required someone accessing a circuit breaker behind an overhead panel in the cockpit. The paper also reports that officials are investigating whether someone would have had to climb down into the plane's lower deck to access an electronics bay in order to stop the plane from pinging its location to satellites.

If there is any concrete evidence of where the plane might be or why it was commandeered, officials haven't yet let it out either officially or anonymously through the press. So, of course, most theories are still plausible, except perhaps for this one:

World seems transfixed by 777 disappearance. Maybe no crash but stolen, effectively hidden, perhaps in Northern Pakistan, like Bin Laden.

— Rupert Murdoch (@rupertmurdoch) March 15, 2014

Thankfully, it's not like that guy owns a news network or anything.

There once was a film called Life is Beautiful about Nelly's "Hot in Herre" being looped on a radio station for 24 straight hours. Now, that movie has come to life.

Latino Mix 105.7, a radio station based out of San Francisco, has been playing the St. Louis rapper's 2002 single uninterrupted since at least 3 p.m. local time on Friday. You can stream it live right here. Please do.

UPDATE: We have passed the 24-hour mark. Why you at the bar if you ain't poppin the bottles???

So, why has Latino Mix 105.7 been playing Nelly's "Hot in Herre" for 17 straight hours? Aside from a clear desire to spread joy across the Bay Area, the station is pulling a classic radio stunt ahead of a format change that will re-brand the the channel as Hot 105.7.

But the real question is deeper. As services like Spotify give us increasingly instantaneous access to millions of songs, we must begin to consider the I WAS LIKE GOOD GRACIOUS, ASS IS BODACIOUS.

[gif via this Tumblr]

On Thursday this week, it was confirmed that an H.I.V.-positive woman transmitted the virus to another female sex partner in what is the first reported case of the virus being transmitted between female partners. Health officials claim it is "exceedingly rare" but advise that precautions should be taken nonetheless.

The CDC stated in their Morbidity and Mortality Weekly Report that "the case was investigated, and laboratory testing confirmed that the woman with newly diagnosed H.I.V. infection had a virus virtually identical to that of her female partner, who was diagnosed previously with H.I.V. and who had stopped receiving antiretroviral treatment in 2010."

The women reported "having sex during their periods and using insertive sex toys, sometimes so roughly that bleeding occurred." In order to prevent transmission, the CDC urges the continued use of antiretroviral drugs.

In an editorial, C.D.C. officials advised that all infected people having sex with uninfected people stay on daily antiretroviral drugs, which can reduce virus levels in blood and bodily fluids so much that transmission is highly unlikely.

Though other cases of gay women contracting H.I.V. have been reported, this is the first where both women had no prior sexual history with men or intravenous drug use.

[Image via Huffington Post]

“Is this Matt the Hat?” A pet-name from my childhood.

“So what’s the poop?” I had already explained this to his wife, Leslie, via email, making a ransom note-esque proposition: If you deliver my father to me for a face-to-face interview, I will never contact your family again. Over the years I have mailed them art postcards—a photograph of Pablo Picasso and his son playing on a beach (Bon Anniversarie!); a painting of crows pecking the remains of a cowboy’s body (Thinking of you!)—just to keep them on their toes. If I were the one trying to hide from my teenage sons the fact that I had two adult children, I’d make sure my contact info was more than a Google search away.

“Why? Are you dying?” I very well may be dying: his gay son demanding to see him after 18 years. He probably thinks I’ve contracted HIV, and want to bid him farewell. So as not to spook him, I say I want to meet with him once more during either of our lifetimes to hear what he has to say about things. Once we’re face-to-face, I’ll explain that I might want to write about him, me, us, family, and would it be okay if I record our meeting. He’ll be so seduced by the importance bestowed upon him by my digital recorder, that he’ll mindlessly agree to it. And, “it,” is an interview, on the record, that I will ease him into with the aid of many questions pilfered from the “Proust Questionnaire” on the last page of every issue of Vanity Fair. And I am a writer with nearly two decades of utter distance from my subject. Time is indeed a great healer, if healing is burial.

“What is today? Tuesday? Wednesday?” He mouth-breathes so hard I want to hold the phone away from my face. It’s Monday.

“Let me think...When can I ride my fat ass up there?” The Orange County coastal village where we plan to meet is an hour’s drive south from my home in Los Angeles; he’ll ride his bike 30 miles north from San Diego.

“What’s Jodie doing these days?” Jodie, my mother, his ex-wife for 26 years now, having “found her voice” in group therapy, has created her first non-housewife job, transforming an instinct for bargains and style into a gig personally shopping for female executive-types at discount department stores like Loehmann’s.

“Yeah, she always liked that type of shit.” I begin to divulge more innocuous details about her life in a tone that indicates a half-legit indifference on my part.

“Whatever.” He interrupts in a way that begs me to remind him who asked.

“Try to be there on time so neither of us are waiting.” A bold order coming from a man who, alleging malfunctions of engine or emergency veterinary visits for his cocker spaniel, Bugsy (named for the mafia boss), would leave eight, nine, ten-year-old me darting from window to window trying to convince G-d to make his garish red sports car appear in the driveway. On those occasions when the car materialized, I’d bop out the back door, wipe his passenger seat clean of red pistachio nut shells, and relish the beginning of a much-needed recess. Time to curse, ask sex questions, bitch about my family.

On our way to a park, he’d tell culturally relevant jokes: What’s Pee-Wee Herman’s favorite TV show? “Diff’rent Strokes.” I didn’t get it, but I loved that show. Steering with his left hand, his right hand alternated between the gear stick and the top of my thigh—a more male-related proprietary gesture than a sexual one. At the park he’d shove the swing with such vigor that the chain would pause, jerk, and drop before whisking me back to him. I feared the velocity would send me flying backwards over the swing-set, my neck unceremoniously meeting an iron pole. He once dangled me over the railing of a pedestrian bridge high above a major Atlanta thoroughfare, teasing that he would drop me.

⌘

Loretta Lynn’s “D-I-V-O-R-C-E” blares from the cafe’s outdoor speakers while I prepare to see my erstwhile father for the first time since ’92. Several songs post-Loretta, I’m inspecting anyone in cycling garb for those hyperthyroid pop-eyes of his. When that half of my equation, and his eyes, saunter toward me in sea-captain yellow spandex, I am unmoved save for the same low-grade lurch in my bowels I experience before meeting any stranger, be it for a business meeting or anonymous sex. I remain seated as he blathers: The bike ride was terrific; impressive that I found the place; how long did it take me to get here?

Eighteen years. And you?

[recording]

Do you have any heroes, real or fictional?*

I always admired George Patton except that he was a little bit nuts. 'Cause he was a get-it-done guy and he didn’t care who got in the way, he was gonna move 'em.

Are you a get-it-done guy?

I don’t know. Maybe that’s why I admire him—'cause I don’t get enough done. [giggles]

What is your most treasured possession?*

My bike.

Intangible?

I guess—uh—happiness.

Are you happy?

Yeah, when I’m on my bike I’m good.

And when you’re not on your bike?

Oh yeah, yeah. I’m pretty happy. You know I don’t have any issues going on. I’m healthy. Not necessarily wealthy but healthy.

Which living person do you most despise?* ^[1]

The guy that’s in charge of Korea: Il. “Ment-a-lly ill,” that’s his brother. Mentally ill, get it? I think he’s a real jerk—fucks his whole country up.

What is the proudest moment in your life?*

Well, the happiest day was the day I left your mother.

Why do you dislike her so much?

She would talk out of both sides of her mouth: two-faced.

Aren’t most people to some degree?

I mean she’d say, “Hi, how are you?” to someone and then to me: “What the fuck does she want?”

At what point did you know you had made a huge mistake?

When she was walking down the aisle. [Laughs.]

You kind of look like Don Rickles.

[Guffaws.]

Do people tell you that?

Let me tell you the first lesson in physics: Mass trumps height. [Giggles.] I have been told that hundreds of times. I go into Ralph’s supermarket: [Old-person voice] “You look just like Don Rickles!” and alluvasudden, everyone’s telling me I look like fucking Don Rickles. He’s like 88 years old!

Well, he has appeal.

So I thought I should memorize a couple of his routines off of YouTube. You know: [Don Rickles voice] “You fuckin’ hockey pucks!” Then I thought, you know that show The Shield, Michael Chiklis, the guy who has that human penis look? See, when my head is shaved, people will say, “Oh it feels so good,” and I’ll say, “Yeah, it’s the human penis look.” [Don Rickles voice] “I’m a real dickhead.”

What are your best and worst physical characteristics?*

Worst is that I weigh a lot more than I wish I did. I weigh 185 pounds and I’m five-eight.

You’ve been fatter.

[Guffaws.]

You have, right?

When?

When I knew you, you had a huge stomach.

You remember it that way? Well you’re right. I got as high as two-twenty. I don’t know how the fuck I did that.

All those red pistachio nuts.

You remember that?

Why did you eat red pistachio nuts?

'Cause I liked them.

They’re no different than—

No, red has a different taste when they add that dye. But you don’t see those anymore. But then you shake hands with anyone or you touch your shirt—

Hot pink.

Yeah! They were good. I remember those. You know, this is funny. This is like an old uncle comes to see the guy: [Old-person voice] “Oh you’ve grown. I remember when you were playing baseball.”

Who’s the uncle? Me or you?

Well, you, because you remember so well that I was big.

Yeah, you don’t look fat now.

No, not really.

For your age I think you look totally fine.

Well for 62—nobody can believe I’m 62. They say, “Bullshit, you’re 50.” Yeah, I’m in good shape. See, here’s the official bike rider legs. [Peels bike shorts back.] If somebody says, “I ride a bike,” let me see your tan. If you ain’t got one: fuck you.

What’s your best physical characteristic?*

I’m strong as a bull. [Puts hand out to squeeze mine.] See, if we kept this up I could crush it. You’d be out first. See, I don’t give. [Laughs.]

You named your happiest moment but what is your proudest moment?

Well, most people say, “the birth of my children,” but ... proud? Hmm ... proud ...

When is the last time you cried?*

I cried for about eight seconds when my mother called me and told me my father died.

Were you close with your dad?

Yeah, fairly. I mean—not adversarial. He didn’t like some of the things I did, like when I joined the cops—you know I was a cop once—in Atlanta. My mom says, “Bobby, do something, but do something legal.” She was afraid I might become like a gambling guy or something—you know, betting on football. I said, “Don’t worry, I’m doing something legal.” See, I’d already joined the police force—she didn’t know it—they were already out here in California. Then they came to Atlanta for a visit and I get home from the job at like 9:30 at night dressed in my blue uniform: gun, badge, handcuffs, hat. My father took one look at me: “I don’t believe this.” He’s walking around like he had a bullet up his ass, and then he goes, “You know, you don’t go to Vietnam to get shot in the woods, but you wanna get shot in a liquor store?” 'Cause I didn’t go into the army like him.

Did you duck out on the draft?

No, they stopped the draft at 195 and I was 202. That was a near-miss.

Were you scared?

O-ho-ho-ho-ho, I used to have dreams of bullets cracking by my head! I actually got shot at once when I was a cop and that’ll change your whole fuckin’ life. I mean, all of a sudden, this good guy, Bobby, who stops you for speeding and doesn’t give you a ticket—I’m getting shot at, and I go what the hell is this? So I said, “Done.” That night. [Laughs.] Thirteen thousand a year with a college degree? I don’t think so, I don’t think so. I turned off the siren and the blue light and said, “See ya!”

How long did you do that for?

Six months. It was long enough.

Tell me the Tyrone story.

What?! How did you know about that?

Because you told me.

Tyrone and the cops? Oh that was the funniest thing I ever heard. OK, I’m in with a veteran officer, right? And he was a real bigot from Alabama or some place like that, and I’m not a bigot, right, and the whole area we patrol is black—southwest Atlanta. So anyways, he’s talking about, [Southern accent] “You see Lucius over there, he’s probably fuckin’ sellin’ drugs, and Tyrone over there, he’s probably beatin’ up his wife, and that’s why we have to go over there,” you know, domestic cause. Then, alluvasudden, someone broke a speeding rule, or, you know, a small traffic violation. So he says, “OK, we’re gonna stop this guy and you pay attention to what I do.” So he gets out of the police car and walks up to the driver’s window and says, “Alright, Tyrone. Let me see your license,” and the driver goes, “How’d you know my name was Tyrone?” [Guffaws.] And I was dying back there, it was so funny ... That was the boy’s name ... The black guy’s name.

I never forgot that story.

It’s funny you should remember that.

Well I have a good memory.

Apparently.

What role does sex play in your life?

It doesn’t play a big enough role! Ha-ha-ha, that would be true! You know what happens with women? [Whispers.] Menopause. And once that happens, it’s like they could care less. On the other hand, I told Leslie one time, I said, “If I stop lookin’ at girls, shoot me. On the spot.”

No offense, but you don’t strike me as someone who could be faithful.

Well, I may have a wild hair. It’s one thing to look. When Leslie asked me to get married I told her I could be loyal, but not necessarily faithful—expecting her to back off. Instead she said, “Just don’t do it in our bed.”

What is your motto?*

“Do unto others before they do unto you.” Just kidding. Ummm … [under breath] “Do unto others before they do unto you,” or “If you don’t cheat you’re only cheating yourself.” No, I’m just kidding, I’m just kidding. Umm ... Umm ... "What goes around comes around."

You used to have a police scanner in your car. What was that about?

Just to see what’s going on. I always like to know what’s going on. Especially when I was a cop. I was always like, “Whoa, what’s going on around here?”

You weren’t a cop when you had the police scanner. You had it after the fact.

Yeah, I had it after the fact.

So what was that about?

That was like, “Oh, I’m not a cop anymore, that’s so sad.” Yeah, I would have stayed with it if my father hadn’t gotten in my face about it—and if I hadn’t gotten shot at.

You used to go and watch fires if you heard over the scanner that there was one happening.

How’d you know that?

You took me with you.

I took you with me? When was that? You must have been ten or eleven. I don’t remember that. Jesus. The only thing I really remember is you coming over to my house and throwing a ball with you in the yard, and we went to some parks.

Are there times when you think about me and my sister?

Yeah there were plenty of times when I wondered, you know, what was going on with both of you. But when I moved out here I felt like I might as well have been in Guam. Yeah, yeah, yeah. I used to wonder.

What is your relationship like with your sons?

Good. [Pause.] What else do you wanna know? [Laughs.] I mean, how do I answer that question?

I used to play tennis with Jeffery when he was coming up, but I was too competitive for him. Alex, on the other hand, is very competitive, so Alex is more my mode. Jeffrey took thousands of dollars worth of tennis lessons but wouldn’t practice on his own. It’s like going to school and you only take class only. So I ask him, “If you don’t read the books, you don’t do the homework, don’t do the projects—how good of a student you gonna be?” I might as well have been talking Swahili. When I was a racquetball player I would stand at the 37-foot mark just three feet from the back wall, and hit backhand after backhand, and if I didn’t hit 95 out of 100, I would stay until I did. So I was good at it.

You owned a racquetball club in the '80s, right?

Seventies and '80s. Seventy-seven through '84. I loved racquetball. I was good at it.

It was crazy there, right?

What kind of crazy?

Well, that’s when you were doing lots of coke.

Coke?! Where’d you hear that?

My mother.

Yeah, she didn’t like that; she made me throw it away, so I did. But I tried it once, and the ball was this big, and back in those days nobody knew anything about the badness of it. So, enough of that.

How long were you actively using it?

Just in that area when I was playing tournaments, then I said enough of that. That was bad stuff. You don’t wanna be messing with that, and that’s my comment on that. Moving right along.

I prefer downers, myself.

It’s like this: If you think you’re having so much fun doing an activity sober, it is so much more fun high. I didn’t know anything about drugs. I was as far away from that as you are from being a space-shuttle pilot. So I was playing in a tournament, and I’m walking tired because I had had a very tough match, and I had to play in the afternoon. So I’m in the locker room between first and second game dying, just dying; I hadn’t got two heartbeats to put together. And one of my friends said, “Here, try this.” I didn’t know what the fuck it was. I said, “What will it do to me?” [Giggles.] He gave me a little spoonful and I went back on that court and I was [whispers] so good. I’m diving into walls, I’m all over the court; I’m winning. I’m good. And I said, “What the fuck was that? Give me some of that!” And so then I always had a little bit just for events like that. My peers would go to a place called the Slimelight—the Limelight. It was a disco back in the disco era—you know, Donna Summer and the Pointer Sisters—so they would go there and the sign of “I’m doing well in my job” wasn’t buying a Mercedes like it is now—it was having a big ass bag of coke in your pocket. One night we’re at the club, and they wanted to leave a tip for the lady—the waitress—and they left her a line of coke that we called an I-75 line because it’s so long and wide. Then everybody started doing it involving sex and then we found out that girls who we’d call “coke whores” would spin on their heads if they could to score some coke.

So what years were you actively using?

Just for ... you know, ’84 …’85 … ’86—somewhere in there. But then I stopped. Everybody did coke, we didn’t give a shit, and nobody felt like we were doing a criminal activity. We were very cavalier about it.

Why did you and Leslie choose not to tell your sons about me and my sister?

Why? I don’t know. It was such a bad era of my life. I put Jodie behind me like it never happened. I didn’t like her much. And when I was done, I was done. That may be another earmark of me: When I get done, I get way done. [Laughs.]

Do you think that they’ll find out?

I don’t know. In retrospect ... because, you know, you’re alive, maybe it was a bad idea. It wasn’t something I consciously thought of, like, “We gotta keep this a secret.”

Do you fear the day that your sons find out?

I mean, I don’t know.

What would you say to them?

I don’t know. I haven’t thought about it.

Well, think about it.

Well, it’s not going to happen, is it?

No, no—not from me. But, with that said, I feel like they’re going to find out at some point. So what are you going to say?

Oh, I don’t know, I’ll probably just tell them what I told you.

What if they say to you, “You didn’t like the wife, but why did you leave the kids?”

Welllll ... that, that particular item is probably a lack of good judgment right there—that particular part. OK. It’s not like you said, “Gee, I wish I could be born to you, Dad.” So, that, I would say on my part was a lack of good judgment. That’s like handing you a gun with the barrel pointed at you. You never do that, right? Well I think this is the same kind of bad judgment.

Did you and Leslie take the time to hide your wedding photos? We were in your wedding.

I know. No, no we didn’t.

There are still pictures of me and my sister in your wedding album?

Uh-huh.

And your kids don’t ask?

Well, they don’t look at it, but one time Alex saw your sister in one of those pictures and said, [in child’s voice] “Oh, what a cute little girl.”

Why did we stop seeing you?

Who? You?

Why did I stop seeing you? Do you remember?

Why?

Yeah.

[Blows air through lips like a horse.] I have no idea.

Do you feel any guilt about it?

Well.

And you can be honest.

Oh can I? [Laughs.] Uh, yeah, yeah, especially if one of you had turned out to be a serial killer or something like that. You know, like, “Oh, my father abandoned me.” But apparently that didn’t happen, right?

Right.

So that’s good to know! [Laughs.] You didn’t kill anybody!

No, not yet.

I hope not today. I had a sense of that. You said in your email to Leslie that you’d probably never see me again, and one of my friends said, “He’s probably gonna pull a gun out and shoot you.” [Laughs.]

[End recording.]

I have what I came for. Despite his knack for animated storytelling, everything I have heard about him is validated—confirmed and exacerbated by the funny man himself.

Bare pleasantries will do at this juncture—a handshake and a thank-you—but his chatter shows no sign of abatement. Nuanced gestures are all but lost on him: the closing of a notebook; the capping of a pen; the placement of said notebook and pen in backpack.

First, a self-congratulation—and nod to me—for voting against Proposition 8, the California initiative to ban gay marriage. Which leads to his next topic: HIV and other sexually transmitted infections, naturally. “Man, am I lucky I never caught anything.” While living in the penthouse of his parents’ tony Atlanta hotel, his goal was to “fuck a different girl in every single one of the rooms.” In five years he stained his way through all 314 rooms, one-and-a-half times for a grand total of 471 different women—no condoms—charting his success on a piece of poster board.

I place my backpack on my lap.

Then there was the vacation at Club Med in Martinique. “Oh, you gotta hear this!” He imitates a woman, a young nurse, who he was about to fuck. “I want you to use a condom,” she told him, his impersonation a whiny child’s voice with protruding bottom lip. “So I said, ‘I’ll pass.’”

And the account of the day he lost his virginity at the Bulldog Inn on the University of Georgia campus: like “sticking [his] dick in wet hamburger meat.” He alleges that he ejaculated with such force that he launched the woman off of him: “Tossed her across the room.”

I scoot my chair back and stand.

One more tidbit as we walk toward the parking lot. “I’ll tell you something about your mother on your deathbed—but only then.” My deathbed. “What?” I ask cooly, “She fucked on your first date?” Laughing, he rams me flat-backed against the brick wall of the café: some sort of masculine non-verbal version of OMG! “She did something to me that I’ll never forget.” He wants to disclose information that I imagine I would choose to disbelieve, so, as to avoid any disturbing imagery, I opt out of this revelation. Apparently, I still have feelings for my mother.

I pat myself down for car keys.

He prattles on about the bike, the wind gusts, and the state parks he’s about to ride through. “Well, thanks for doing this,” I interject. Any pangs of sorrow or fear that this is the last time our thyroid-diseased eyes (his too fast, mine too slow) will meet, elude me.

Clicking helmet straps together, he wishes me luck, mounts his bike, and in a theatrically solemn, low-toned voice adds: “Goodbye, my son.”

I scowl at him. He giggles.

“I say that to everyone.”

Matt Siegel holds an MFA in Nonfiction Writing from the University of Iowa. You can read more of his work here and here.