Sounds like somebody's got a case of the usedtas.

Famous comedian Mitch Hedberg once told a joke that went like this:

"I used to do drugs. I still do, but I used to, too."

Well, I used to be able to write moderately funny pieces. That's all. But in honor of that, and of the fact that I just re-read one of those moderately pieces, and also in honor of the fact that a new (posthumous) Mitch Hedberg album just came out, I've decided to repost a post from an old blog. And here it is:

Local Rock-Paper-Scissors Champion Dethroned Mont Pelier, VT - Pine Tree elementary school was the site, Thursday, of the unseating of reigning 5th grade rock-paper-scissors champion George Roberts by upstart 4th grader Seth Johnson. In a rochambeau for the ages, Johnson and Roberts were pitted against each other in a best 2 out of 3 contest throughout most of recess before Johnson finally emerged victorious with a cunningly timed rock to beat Roberts' scissors. The duel began as many expected it would, with Roberts gaining the early advantage. After both competitors threw rock on the first turn, Roberts followed up with a paper to cover Johnson's second round rock. After the quick start, however, the challengers settled into what would become an epic series of doubles. "After that first quick loss, I knew I was in trouble," said Johnson after the match. "But I just took a deep breath and tried to let my training take over." Indeed both Johnson and Roberts seemed to enter trance-like states for most of the battle, their eyes barely open, bodies still and relaxed save for their pumping fists. Spectators later described the sight with superlatives that ranged from, "Awesome," to, "Awesomely awesome." Dana Sedgewick, a 5th grader and Roberts' alleged girlfriend, had a vantage point virtually right on top of the action and perhaps summed it up better than anyone. "I've never seen anything like it. It was more than rock-paper-scissors; it was high art - grace and glory fully realized." After Roberts' second throw victory, both competitors threw scissors, then rock, scissors, scissors, paper, scissors, paper, paper, rock and scissors as the contest entered a streak of 327 consecutive draws. The next score was set up when Johnson and Roberts both employed Bonetti's Defense simultaneously. Named after Charlie Bonetti, a 19th century rock-paper-scissors master, Bonetti's Defense is a complex pattern of 43 sequential throws that's been known to confuse even the most heralded rock-paper-scissors champions. That Roberts and Johnson were both able to employ it is evidence enough of their mastery. That they each decided to do so at the same time was incredible. But what happened next was sheer magic. Roberts and Johnson each appeared to notice the other's strategy 11 throws into the series, and, again simultaneously, both Roberts and Johnson diverted from the scripted 12th throw of paper and each threw scissors instead. This led to 31 playful draws consisting of precisely the opposite throws of those prescribed by Bonetti's defense that filled the previously tense rochambeau circle with laughter. Once the altered series was completed, the amazing run of ties was finally broken up some 10 throws later after draws of paper, paper and scissors when Johnson's further scissors cut Roberts' paper. After a short break in the action punctuated by the amazed gasps of the audience, the opponents played out a thrilling series, likely to never be repeated, of no less than 546 draws, the highlight of which was a mind-bending set of 22 straight rocks followed by 3 papers, 2 scissors and a further 12 rocks. The contest finally concluded on the 876th throw. Following draws of scissors, scissors, scissors, rock, paper, scissors and paper, Roberts' scissors was defeated by a rock which Johnson immediately thrust into the air as a proclamation of victory. The opponents then looked to each other and embraced in a show of sportsmanship rarely seen in this day and age. Afterwards, Roberts, whose win streak of 657 matches had come to an end, remarked that, "After a match like that, you're just proud to have been a part of it. Sure I'm disappointed with the loss, but that was one for the record books." When asked about the possibility of a rematch, Roberts replied thus: "There's plenty of time for a rematch. Right now I just want to spend some time with my family and regain my focus. I'll be back, I'm just going to need a little time." Johnson, for his part, was magnanimous, extolling the virtues of his competitor only moments after defeating him. "George is a great role model of mine. Just the chance to be able to compete with him was an honor. My only hope is that I can follow in his footsteps and bring the same pride to Pine Tree Elementary that George did as champion." The school was abuzz with the news of Johnson's victory for the rest of the afternoon, and students will likely be talking about the momentous contest at least until next month's tetherball tournament begins.

This is water

David Foster Wallace died on Friday, which is to say he committed suicide. Many people have written about this already, and, well, here's one more. It's with good reason that Wallace has inspired so many glowing obituaries: he was a consummate entertainer, an adroit stylist, seemingly fearless in terms of the scope and depth of the stories he was willing to tell, and as exhaustive a thinker as you're likely to find this side of ancient Greece.

On Monday I read an article of Wallace's that I hadn't come across before. It's about Roger Federer and the sublimity of his tennis. As wonderful a fiction writer as Wallace was, I think he may have been more talented at non-fiction, and this article, although not my favorite of his, is still certainly a good example of his prowess. In it he refers to "Federer moments." "These are times," he writes, "as you watch the young Swiss play, when the jaw drops and the eyes protrude and sounds are made that bring spouses in from other rooms to see if you're O.K." I wonder if Wallace understood that his own work is full of many such moments. He was such a talented writer and thinker, he must have known what he was capable of, so I wouldn't be surprised if he did understand he could produce those kinds of effects in readers. And so, I suppose, what I really wonder is if he believed it, the compliments and accolades, or if he thought it was all just people being nice.

But putting that to one side, for all the acclaim of Wallace's literature that has poured out of commentators over the past few days, there has been, it seems, just as much space dedicated to his compassion, deep understanding, and overall human decency. This is what Sam Anderson said in New York Magazine:

"You got the sense, from his work and from interviews, that he was a deeply sweet man looking hard for wisdom."

Wisdom. That's what I'd come to expect from David Foster Wallace in the short time I'd been reading his work. Which is why, despite the dark themes and bleak forecasts that appeared in his writing, his death was such a shock to me. A wise man doesn't tie his own noose - it's such a simple rule it could fit inside a fortune cookie. And David Foster Wallace was a wise man.

The news came as even more of a surprise to a friend of mine. All she knew of Wallace's work was this commencement address - something a lesser writer such as myself would have been proud to consider his magnum opus and which, if you haven't read it, you should go read instead of this - delivered at Kenyon College in 2005. There's real truth in that address, "capital T truth," to use Wallace's words, as there is real truth in almost all of his work, and within that Truth there is humility and humanity and honesty and hope and an image of a world in which it is rarely, if ever, easy to live, but which it is nonetheless worthwhile to experience and to attempt, with extreme futility at times, to understand. There is wisdom in that address. And then there is the fact of David Foster Wallace's suicide.

The question wasn't so much "why?" as it was "how?" "How could someone who wrote that speech kill himself?" my friend asked. I think I said, "I don't know." But of course there is an answer to that question: people are complicated, and you can't judge a writer-cum-person based on the breadth of his work let alone one fifteen minute commencement address, just as you can't judge a book by the stock of its paper or the elegance of its font. But that doesn't really answer the question because the question isn't really about David Foster Wallace the person (and honestly, can we actually, truly, deeply care about DFW the person, those of us who never actually, truly knew him?), it's about David Foster Wallace the character, the one that she and I and you and they have drawn in our minds, created out of his own words, who is sage and clownish and fragile and hyperliterate and strong and sad and professorial and who is always holding a tennis racket and on and on and on, and what it felt like, to me at least, was that that character (always toothfully smiling in my mind, incidentally) also killed himself and not just his wife, but we found him dangling from a rafter in the attic (and still smiling, and dangling, and smiling, but) dead, and how can he kill himself, because if he kills himself, then what the Hell are we supposed to do? And I don't know the answer to that question - I'm no David Foster Wallace. I don't even know where I'm going with this line of thought, really, except to say that the both of them were/are important - the person and the character of David Foster Wallace - and that both of them will be missed and mourned, but that, I think, they each deserve to be mourned in different ways and understood in different ways because one death was of a fellow member of the human race, but the other death, the death of the character, feels as if it was the death of a piece of our own bodies and minds.

To go back to that article about Roger Federer, it was, in standard Wallace form, full of the eye-popping, jaw-dropping verbal and rhetorical acrobatics for which Wallace is rightly celebrated. But for all of those Wallace moments, my favorite part of this piece is the final paragraph of the final footnote. It's the moment, I think, that the Wallace wisdom shines through, and it's the moment that he's at both his most fearless and his most hopeful. It's the joyful kernel of Truth that he dug out of the story. It's the piece that hits you in the heart. And it's one of the things about his work that I loved most.

I'm still sure that David Foster Wallace was wise, is wise. I'm sure that he will remain wise, as long as his words can be read. The voice of that dangling caricature, smiling and hanging from a rope in my mind, hasn't been silenced by the rope around his neck. He's still talking and twirling a tennis racket, and every now and again he laughs which, as strange a thing as that might be for a hanged man to do, is still of some comfort to me because it tells me that the David Foster Wallace part of me is still alive. So maybe wise men do tie their own nooses, they just make sure to tie them loose enough that their souls can still slip out. You will be missed, Mr. Wallace, but I don't think you will be forgotten.