All posts by Matthew Callan

Pointless Nostalgia

If You See Something

Earlier this year, on one of the first nice weekends of the spring, me and my family decided to venture out of the house so we would hopefully no longer be tempted to murder one another. It was that kind of winter.

Unfortunately, everyone else in the city decided to do the same thing. So we waited forever for a bus to take us to Queensboro Plaza hoping to take the N/R into Manhattan, only to find the platform packed three deep with scrambling, antsy folks who’d clearly been waiting for quite some time. After a ridiculously long winter, the mild, almost-70-degree temperatures felt downright balmy. Everyone was a little sweaty and nervous and pushy. Especially me, as I tried to keep my daughter from running around the platform and zipping toward the third rail like a magnet.

And while I was trying to corral her, I noticed something odd: A large suitcase sitting on the edge of the subway platform, in the yellow space where you’re technically not supposed to stand. It was the wheeled kind, designed to be dragged behind you as you run through an airport or knock pedestrians over on a busy street while you talk on the phone. Its retractable handle was fully extended. The reason it stood out is because on this crowded platform, it was all by itself. No one was standing near it. The suitcase had either been accidentally abandoned or was left there on purpose.

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Boob Tubery

Cable TV Remembers 9/11

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HOW ‘ER GOT DONE (History Channel): Larry the Cable Guy narrates this special on the building of the 9/11 Memorial and gets in on the action, learning how to operate a jackhammer and accidentally destroying a marble panel engraved with the names of several slain firefighters. “Blasphemously inappropriate,” says The New York Times.

THE TOP 100 9/11s OF ALL TIME (VH1): A look back at all the September 11s in recorded history. Where does 2001 rank? The answer may shock you! With Hal Sparks, Michael Ian Black, and former CIA director Leon Panetta.

THE GEORGE W. BUSH 9/11 INTERVIEW–AFTER DARK (National Geographic Channel): The former president remembers the heady moments immediately following the terrorist attacks while sharing a smoke and few highballs with Hugh Hefner and the Playboy Bunnies. Musical guest: Dave Brubeck.

FROM THE ASHES: THE HEALING POWER OF CELEBRITY (Bravo): Some of the world’s biggest stars come together to remind us of how their shining examples of strength gave us the power to pull through such dark times.

THE TOWERS FALLING AND PEOPLE SCREAMING AND COVERED WITH TOXIC DUST AND IN PAIN OVER AND OVER AND OVER AGAIN UNTIL YOU WANNA FUCKING KILL YOURSELF (CNN): This is CNN’s Yule Log.

MY PET GOAT (CSPAN): This special edition of Book Talk features a dramatic reading of the classic children’s tale, punctured by a lengthy, eerily uncomfortable pause.

ENTREPRENEURS (CNBC): Maria Bartiromo profiles some of the enterprising people who sell all manner of 9/11-related tchotchkes within feet of the former World Trade Center site, and somehow resists the urge to kick them in the balls.

COMFORT FOOD (Food Network): Paula Deen and Rachel Ray share the best recipes for dishes to eat in enormous quantities in one sitting when nothing else will chase away the demons of reality.

THE CONCERT FOR NEW YORK CITY (MTV): Ooof, this is tough to watch now. I mean, it’s just really weird. Did you know Dennis Leary is in this thing? But I guess we gotta, huh? Yeah, I guess.

THE PHYSICS OF CRASHING PLANES INTO STUFF (Science Channel): Want to know exactly how two jets could take down two of the two tallest buildings in the country and kill thousands? No? Too bad, we’re going over it in excruciating detail anyway.

72 STRAIGHT HOURS OF LAW & ORDER, LIKE ALWAYS (USA): Just watch this, okay?

Pointless Nostalgia

Choose Your Own Traumatic Adventure

Sometimes I use this site to write about painful memories. I find it’s cheaper than therapy and less habit forming than medication (though just barely). That’s not to put down anybody who needs either (or both) of those things to deal with whatever requires dealing with in their lives. I just find that tapping it out on a computer works best for me. Writing is the medium in which I express myself the best. If I could sculpt or paint or interpretive dance better than I can write, I’d do it one of those ways. But I don’t, so here we are.

For a long time, I exclusively wrote funny-ha-ha stuff here (or tried to, anyway). Whenever I considered writing about Deep Things, I feared coming across as one of those precious kids you’d hear in freshman composition class, pouring out their soul about the ordeal of having a vaguely distant father, because my trauma is SO important, the WORLD needs to hear about it and share my pain.

I can’t say when or why I changed my mind about that, really, but at some point I discovered that this site gives me the means to lay those memories out and defang them by transmogrifying a tale of woe into a humorous anecdote. Or at the very least, finding some humor to extract from it, usually at my own expense.

I’ve come to believe that in most instances of non-physical trauma, how much damage you suffer from it is largely up to you. Yes, horrible people can say horrible things to make you feel horrible, especially when you’re a kid and don’t quite know how to handle it. But we all grow up (unless you live in Williamsburg), and at some point in your life you have a choice. You can hang on to the pain forever and let it eat at you like an untreated wound, or you can slough it off in some way–such as, say, writing about it–and let the spot heal.

I’ve chosen the latter. In examining many of these incidents with the remove of time, the thing I find the most funny is the one thing I could have changed–namely, how I reacted to them and held on to the anger for way too long, thus giving a lot of power to people and things that didn’t really deserve it.

[I also now take a kind of perverse pleasure in careening wildly between straight-up silly posts and serious ones on Scratchbomb. Like this site has become my personal episode of M*A*S*H and I am Hawkeye. One second I’m wearing an arrow through my head and the next I’m standing over a dead soldier muttering, “When will the killing end?!”]

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