Every week, I tell you about five things that make me proud to be an American. Nobody murdered Glenn Beck this week, so here's five other things.
When Michael Jordan was inducted into the Basketball Hall of Fame last week, we all expected to see a kinder, gentler MJ at the podium. An MJ mellowed by time away from the spotlight and the grind; ready to take his place as an elder statesman of the game. "Here," we so naively thought, "is a chance to get a peek behind the curtain and see the Real MJ: a genuinely nice and possibly endearing fellow who just happened to be the Best Basketball Player Ever".
Well, the real MJ is what we got. Turns out that the real MJ is even realer than Charles Barkley. He stood up at that podium and gave us a peek behind the curtain, all right, and what we saw wasn't pretty. It was awesome.
Here is a guy that has literally conquered every mountain that ever stood before him. The Final Four. The Olympics. NBA Championships. Huge gambling debts to mobsters who mysteriously turned up dead. Whatever. The man has failed at nothing, and yet, there he is, on the TV, talking noise at people for things that happened almost 30 years ago. He didn't go up to the podium with a speech, he went up with a hitlist.
Isaiah Thomas? Boom. George Gervin? Boom. Dean Smith? Boom. One by one he went down the list, naming the man – he went after both friend and foe – and the grievance – no matter how small or inconsequential – that later drove him to greatness. A lesser man – or at least anyone that's not a borderline sociopath - probably wouldn't have let things get to him so much. Water, duck, etc.
But sometimes you have to be a sociopath to be the Greatest. Actually, probably every time.
I bought my wife one for Christmas last year.Since then she's made chocolate-chip cookies from scratch something like 600 times. A machine that's the Jack Horner of cookie porn in my kitchen is instantly my favorite appliance in the house.
Look at it. They should put one in the Guggenheim. It screams 1950s but it's not dated. It looks as at-home in Betty Draper's kitchen as it does in yours.
My dog figured out pretty quickly that the grill out on the deck is basically a machine that meat comes out of. That's how I feel about the Kitchenaid. But with cookies.
As Americans, we're taught that the Founding Fathers worked together, in harmony, to build this nation. That a group of men from diverse backgrounds and parts of the country came together to craft a nation from whole cloth, out of thin air, and for nothing other than the common Good.
What we're not taught in schools, is the amazing life story of Aaron Burr. He's probably best-known at this point for the tremendous Got Milk? ad that launched approximately eight trillion watered-down and impossibly shitty imitations. And that's unfortunate, because the man led a full and amazing life. He fought in the Revolutionary War, was Vice President under Thomas Jefferson, and Wikipedia lists "adventurer" among his professions.
He shot and killed Alexander Hamilton, hung out in South Carolina for a while until the heat died down, then went back to Washington and his job as the Vice President of the United States of America.
Then came the adventuring. Burr allegedly assembled a small army and made plans to overtake parts of Louisiana, Mexico, and the western United States and combine them into an independent nation, or empire, with, of course, himself as the ruler. This is unallegedly awesome.And you probably didn't hear about it in history class.
Which is unfortunate because America's history is pretty short. We don't have many intrigues where crazy people have gathered up to try to blow up Parliament, or secede(well except for that one time), or any of the other nonsense that goes on in Europe. We don't have much; just a few things. What we have is Aaron Burr.And he was a pretty rad guy.
Originally we were going to go with this because it is unironically impressive that that can happen without people getting teargassed. Or rioting. Or flipping police cruisers in the street.
But no, we're civilized here: we only carry on like that during football season. Also: that video? A little too much serious business and not enough Patrick Swayze.
So let's talk about Patrick Swayze. More to the point, let's talk about Road House. Let's talk about how every guy from the ages of 25 to 35 has seen it at least 300 times. TNT thought they were just scheduling late-night filler. Little did they know they were shaping young minds.
Godspeed, James Dalton. Bounce some heads at that big Double Deuce in the sky for us.
The Champagne of Beers. Your grandfather or uncle had a fridge full of it in the garage. It comes in a clear bottle that makes you cringe if you worry about your beer getting skunked. It's sudsier than the average beer. It's at its best when its ice cold.
If you're a beer snob, here are some complaints that you can trot out next time you're at a cookout and someone has the audacity to show up with a cooler of High Life: You can pout and put your hands on your hips use completely hetero terms like one-finger head and mouthfeel when you talk about why you don't like the High Life.
You can talk about the amazing short-run 12 dollar beer that you get at the specialty market down the street from your house and how much better it was, how it filled your mouth with its velvety richness. You can bitch about how fizzy the High Life is and how simplistic is. You can talk about lack of character and swill.
You can talk and carry on but you're missing the point. Go post on beeradvocate.com and talk about how it tastes like "vomit" and then go pat yourself on the back and play your guitar in the woods. Play your guitar while everyone else looks at each other sideways and does that eyebrow thing that says "God what an asshole".
Check out our Proud To Be An American archive.
 Aaron B. Murray writes words and makes pictures. He is credited on more than a few high profile video game releases as well as an ever-growing stack of unproduced screenplays. Originally from East Tennessee, he currently lives in Utah with his wife and a ridiculous dachshund. Follow him on Twitter at murray_cod |
