The Tao of Sam

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  • Chapter 107: Finding inner peace at a metal show

    The roar of the crowd rises as the long haired man in the ragged shirt strides onto stage. Picking up the microphone, he wraps the cord around his wrists, his grip causing the definition of his arms to show, biceps bulging out and stretching the fabric. Behind him an insane man with wild eyes and long white hair staggers to pick up another microphone.

    The singer taunts the crowd in a language of tongues. Someone shoves me. I’m flying across a strange vacuum in the midst of strangers. I bounce between people whose faces are tattooed with satanic symbols.

    I am a ping pong ball. I leap into the air and sail up onto the crowd. I spin. I fall. I look around. The voices come from all directions at once. The crowd is yelling. The band is screaming.

    My ears hurt.

    I stagger towards the pit again, for no good reason. Recognizing someone I’d seen before, I bump him in the shoulder, and in a move that defies the conservation of energy, he shoves me off of the ground to arc through the smoke filled heavens into a tightly packed group, who deflect me into a hapless girl. I slide down and climb back up again.

    A bloody nose walks by me. He looks confused.

    I don’t know what to call what is coming out of the man with the white hair’s mouth. It could be singing, it could also be the cries of a trapped demon. He sounds so angry I don’t know how to describe it. The demographics of the crowd remind me of American History X, too many tattoos and shaved heads. A man of no less than 300lbs is using another man as a battering ram.

    My ears are bleeding.

    Everyone but the drummer puts down their instruments and picks up previously hidden drums. All four of them start beating the drums in perfect rhythm and force, the sound rising and rising and rising until people do not know what to do. Panic breaks out.

    I am laughing as someone shoves me from behind.

    I am laughing as I twirl out of control from tattoo to tattoo.

    I am laughing as my senses overwhelm my conscious thought.

    I want to run in every direction at once, to rise like a phoenix into the open air and explode.

    I am laughing, because this is my release.

  • Chapter 106: Hair Today, Dead Tomorrow

    “You know you can take a pill for that.”

    “What?”

    “That,” he said, pointing at my hair. “To make it stop.”

    I stared blankly at him. “You mean a pill for baldness.”

    “Yeah. It makes it stop as long as you keep taking it.”

    My old roommate Chase has never had an oversupply of tact, but he does occasionally hit on something worthy of further thought. There exists a variety of treatments for balding, and many of them could combat what is clearly identifiable as a receding hairline. A little pill everyday to keep my hair the way it is. Why not take it?

    In my estimation a full head of hair is good for two things, both closely related:

    1. Confidence.
    2. Picking up chicks (+/- keeping them around).

    I feel comfortable positing that a man whose confidence depends on his hair isn’t really a man at all, and relying on your good looks to get and keep a girlfriend probably won’t get you the really good ones. My opinions aside, hair research and the general fight against looking older are big business, and in general all boil down to the same problem. People don’t want any reminder that certain periods of their lives eventually go away (like being young).

    I’m 24. I’m young now. If I want to reap the benefits of being young, I should do it now. If I want to return from the summit I just climbed, rip off my skis and clothing and jump right into a hot tub with three Swedish snow bunnies, I need to do that now. If I want to drink too much, pick up chicks in bars and make bad decisions, there’s no time like the present.

    People are slackers, and the desire to keep your head of hair for later use is just that. It’s slacking. “Well, I don’t know what I want to do with this head of hair yet, but someday I’ll have a really good plan and I want to still have it then.”

    I’m not bitter about it, I’m just not worried. The only women I’ve ever nabbed have been through qualities completely unrelated to my physical appearance, and it’d be foolish to assume that would somehow change.

    In closing, one day I hope to have a *great* personality.

  • Chapter 105: Ten things I learned in Japan

    I’ve had a extremely hard time summarizing Japan, both conversationally and Chaptorally. It could be that the trip was so multifaceted it defied description, or perhaps Japan just stepped outside my comfort zone into a realm of new experience. Maybe I’m just not as good as I think I am.

    1. A culture of non-immigrants
    I’m used to the melting pot. Never in my entire life have I felt like the outsider as blatantly as I did in Japan. Something around 98.6% of the country is Japanese, and us whities and blackies and brownies stick out like Wizards in the Shire (though they’re not as short as implied). When I walked into a restaurant it occasionally felt as if the hostess would mouth “What is HE doing here?”

    2. Japan has never been introduced to the Twinkie
    “Jesus, there are a lot of really hot girls here!” I initially became worried that I had become inflicted by the Asiaphile virus that often besets white males with engineering degrees. However, there exists a much simpler explanation: the Japanese are just all very thin. Chase argues that it’s the diet, that culturally the meals are healthier and also tend to encourage smaller portions. In any event, the girls are incredibly skinny.

    3. Recycle culture or “Someone stole the Trash cans”
    There are very few public trash cans in Japan. By few, I mean that you walk around for 30 minutes carrying your empty fast food cup before you find somewhere legal to drop it. It’s a remarkably effective passive measure to force you to conserve and reuse your trash, or at least sneak into more restaurants.

    4. Repressed sexuality and the objectification of women
    Imagine the US where the 60’s never happened, or at least the feminist movement was a joke. Love hotels, masturbation motels, porn at every turn, creepy men on subways grabbing peoples breasts. And yet, the women just sort of smile passively and look the other way.

    5. Japan has stereotypes of which you haven’t dreamed
    There are roving bands of girls dressed up in a cross between full authentic victorian formal wear and Little Bo Peep’s outfit. Be careful when walking in crowded areas lest you be surrounded by a Group Of Guys Who Look Like Elvis. Also, we once wandered down an alleyway to find 30 teenage girls wearing tattered rags as fashion statements, sitting on the ground poking each other laughing.

    6. Public transportation is the future
    The train system is incredible: fast, clean, reliable. The subways are smoother than babies bottoms (we’re talking a constant acceleration between start and max speed, every single time). For being the largest city in the world, Tokyo’s transportation system made travel easier than I could have imagined (though stay away from the buses, good luck figuring them out).

    7. You can do fine without much personal space
    I had originally been worried about being surrounded by so many people at all times, but I found it was easier than I had thought. The scary parts of Japan for me had more to do with confusion and being lost than not having room to breath. Chase’s apartment was quite small, but after a couple of days you just get used to it. Arriving back in Alexandria felt like returning home to a warehouse.

    8. I’m still learning as a trip planner
    Vacations are incredibly important to everyone, and not everyone speaks up when group decisions are being made. It’s incredibly important to talk individually with your trip partners before you leave to get an idea of what they want out of the trip as a whole. Otherwise stuff just gets left out.

    9. It took me about 15 minutes to become desensitized to the sight of a penis
    Goldie and I went to two different authentic Onsens (bathhouse) while in Japan. I never had a shared shower experience in high school, so at first being surrounded by naked dudes was a little shocking. At the beginning I covered my package with my little hand towel timidly as I moved between different hot tubs, but by the hour and a half point I walked around with my hands on my waist and my hand towel thrown haphazardly over my shoulder. We’ve all got ’em, and judging by experimental observation they’re all *about* the same size, so what’s to be embarrassed about?

    10. Anything to the exclusion of all else is bad
    Japan was a long trip for me, the longest I’ve done without my parents involved. It wasn’t homogenous at all, changing gears and settings frequently. Context shifts are incredibly important with long vacations; you (specifically I) can’t survive doing the same thing for too long, so moving between cities and travel partners helped keep the trip interesting. If I had to do it again, I’d head further outside the cities into smaller towns and try to find some way to spend more time with Japanese people my age (too many Gaijins for my taste).

    I’d go back.

  • Chasing the Gaijin: Tokyo to Osaka

    The first thing you notice when you land in Japan: the place is filled with Japanese people.

    Not just filled, overflowing. It sounds like a stupid thing to say, but it is a shock after living in a city as ethno-diverse as Washington, DC. Outside of the airport and certain tourist hotspots, it is 99.5% Asian.

    I have read some good travel blogs in my day, namely Andrew as he navigated the entirety of Asia, and I know I do not have the chops (patience) to pull it off. Instead I plan on doing a post-trip picture odyssey, much like my previous offerings.

    Japan is fucking nuts. You should go sometime.

  • Chasing the Gaijin: Sam goes to the land of the Rising Sun

    It hasn’t been the same since my old roommate Chase left for Japan eight months ago. The local sonic landscape lost a source of pervasive indie-rock. There is one less Maoist messenger bag wandering the streets of Alexandria. Those cold winter nights without sexually ambiguous physical contact leave many in the DC metro area wanting, waiting for something more. Barring an early return of Chase, I’m taking matters into my own hands.

    I’m going to Japan. I’ll be gone from around April 14th through April 29th.

    Apparently never without an Indian at my side, my friend Arpan (who loves metal) from the office is joining me for the first week, and then for the second week I will be joined by Goldie (who loves frisbees). Once there, we hope to answer the following questions:

    1. Should Sam attempt to climb Mt. Fuji, reason and safety be damned?
    2. Will Arpan be able to find food without the juice of dead animals in it?
    3. Can Goldie handle going to an authentic Onsen, one where they don’t allow swimsuits?
    4. Has Chase broken into the used-japanese-schoolgirl-panty-vending-machines industry yet?

    Check back for occasional updates, and I hope to post pictures whenever possible. If you want a really awesome postcard, send me an e-mail with your mailing address: sam@taoofsam.com

    P.S. If you haven’t before, check out Chase’s informative blog: Chase the Gaijin