Some pansies for your "man cave"

Thursday, March 10, 2011

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Once, before sheetrock and plywood and cement and mortar, men lived in caves. It was probably miserable, but it did the job of protecting us from rain and snow and saber-toothed tigers.

We're fortunate now that we've learned to build our own structures out in the light, and if we don't build it, we buy it.

For some reason though, there seems to be some kind of movement to return to this primordial idea of living in a cave, and it's catching on like a wildfire among the males of this generation.

Consequentially, much is being written about the ever-more popular "man cave" where supposedly, men can go back to being men.

This cave, I guess, is where you put all the things your wife says aren't allowed upstairs, like a pool table, or a bar, or your... nevermind.

Websites have even formed around the idea - mancavesite.org says that it's been going since April of 2008, and its mission statement says that the site is meant to provide a "centralized location to showcase your man cave and share ideas with others who have a similar passion."

Pictures abound of proud men standing in poorly decorated rooms with sports posters, bars made of plywood, and couches that look they've been pulled off the curb after the rain.

I think they should rename the site, or at the very least, change it to something that's more reflective of what they're about.

How about: "We're a group of men who are so spineless that we've let our wives cast us off to the basement, where we vainly hope for respite in what looks like a mix of a 14 year-old's bedroom and the inside of a dive bar in Clifton."

I've long held the opinion that for at least the past 50 years, this country has been moving far too much to the soft side when it comes to men.

Gone is the image of our fathers - men who wouldn't let you cry, men who told you to walk it off, men who looked at your gaping wounds and said with squinted eyes, "Ah, that probably doesn't need stitches."

Now we're supposed to be sensitive. Understanding. It's OK to cry, it's ok to quit, it's ok to sue someone when they punch you instead of hitting them back harder.

We've outlawed dodge ball, tackle football, and peanut butter in the schools, and many kids have even embraced that sort of androgynous style of clothing that I thought died when Bowie's Ziggy Stardust phase ended.

"Testosterone" may as well be a four-letter word, and frankly, we've become a nation of emasculated she-men, whimpering in the corners and afraid of doing things that were once the norm.

But this "man" cave is the final straw; women might as well just nail that basement door shut.

Maybe it's my youth or the fact that I'm not married talking, but how about actually enjoying the whole of the house you live in, instead of leaving it to the wife to decorate while you take refuge in a basement that looks like the inside of a dorm room?

I don't have my own basement to take over, per se, but I have kind of taken over the basement of my parent's house.

There's no couches or college posters in it though - there's a heavy bag, a speed bag, a weight bench, a barbell, and stacks of plates that rival what the best jail in the country has to offer.

The linoleum floor has been broken up by deadlifting too much and the smell is less than appealing.

I don't want to spend more time down there than I have to, really; it's a punishing place, more of a dungeon than a cave. But, should I ever make enough money to own my own house, my new basement will probably look strikingly similar to my old one.

All of this doesn't mean that a man should try to take over his whole house at the expense of his wife, though.

All I'm saying is that should some unfortunate women find me fit to marry, I'd plan on having some kind of say in what the house looked like so I could enjoy the thing myself - and I sure as hell wouldn't plan on being pushed into the damned basement either, like some kind of incontinent animal that can't be trusted to sleep in the nicer rooms.

And by the way - if you're going to put a bar in your basement, at least sell some liquor and make some cash that thing, or bust it up and throw it out.

E-mail: janoski@northjersey.com

Better to wear out than rust out

Wednesday, December 29, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

When you go through elementary and middle school, there’s always "next year" to think about. You’re a year closer to high school, a year closer to driving, a year closer to being 18, a year closer to 21. Something exciting always lies around the bend that’s making right now worth it, and you just can’t wait until "the future" is here.

That wide open world is an electrifying one where you could still be president or an astronaut or a pro baseball player because life hasn’t really arrived and showed you the beating you’re going to take. Instead it waits and watches our ignorant youth, smiles at our idealism, and then plots our demise.

But when it stands and delivers, it does so fiercely. Some of us it kills outright before we reach our prime. Others get in trouble, either with the law or other things, and spend the rest of their time fighting for redemption. A few take off, and shoot right to the top of the food chain in whatever they do. These folks are rare.

Most of us end up somewhere in the middle though, and after high school or college, we find a "real job," which sounds the death knell of looking forward to "what’s around the bend."

In some professions there’s something like a promotion or pay increase to work toward, but many times those are vague hopes, moving targets that can seem so far away that working "toward" them can feel like a Sisyphean task.

It becomes all too easy to settle into what some might call a rut, even in a job you love. The days charge by, the calendar years change, and life rolls at a downhill pace that leaves us wondering where the last decade or so went.

Even our hobbies can take on a mundane feeling, and it becomes rare that we step out of our narrow box and feel the intimidation or discomfort that comes inherent with doing a new thing. We’re too old, too fat, too slow, too tired to be bothered.

This has led to what writer Richard Strozzi-Heckler once called a "muted nation of spectators," a country full of people who live and die by what happens in the sporting arena or on reality TV— not realizing that their own reality is slipping away with every minute.

Strozzi-Heckler blamed this on the manner in which we’re educated.

I disagree. I think it’s just a matter of being human.

We fear the things that we don’t know or haven’t experienced, and breaking through the bars that keep us in the cages we’ve created is just too much for some.

We like patterns, stability, and comfort— and our living room couches tend to be quite comfortable. We forget that the only difference between a rut and a grave is the depth of the hole.

In the last year I’ve found that there is only one way to break this, and although it is simple and sounds easy, it’s a violent transition that is more difficult than it seems: get out in the world, and do things.

As we age, we must, must, must try new things in the attempt to constantly improve. Go somewhere different, join a class, learn a trade, just do something that makes you better than you were an hour ago.

Nobody can set the goal for you, and that’s what makes it both easier and more difficult. I knew I wanted to formally learn to box, but stepping into a boxing gym, no matter where it is, is difficult. It is intimidating, and uncomfortable, until you get a sense of the place.

But that in itself is an adventure. Having that feeling, the worried quiver in the pit your stomach, over something that isn’t all that scary is worth it because once it’s conquered, it’s gone. It’s a tiny victory that no matter how seemingly insignificant, makes us just a little bit tougher, a little bit smarter.

I’ve tried to live this creed out in the last year. I quit smoking, joined a gym, shot a gun, went to a live boxing match, read as many books as I could, and learned to hit a speed bag, All of these were skills or things that a year ago at this time, I couldn’t do, or hadn’t done.

And although they’re not going to win me any medals, although nobody else cares whether I did them or not, they’ve made me believe that over the course of this year, I’ve made progress.

I’m a physically stronger, smarter, better person than I was at this time last year. I was not static, I did not rust on the couch, I did not watch others live while my own life leaked away.

A friend of mine who took up running in his mid-50s sent me an e-mail a month ago talking about a 5K he had run on Thanksgiving morning.

"Funny thing about life," he wrote. "Some participate, most just watch. I suppose both have their merits."

I disagree with him as well. There is no merit in just watching.

In 2011, don't watch. Do.

Email: janoski@northjersey.com

http://www.northjersey.com/recreation/112644679_Better_to_wear_out_than_rust_out.html?c=y&page=1

Lightning crashes, memories burn

BY STEVE JANOSKI

Five years ago, on Jan. 19, my best friend Ryer died two short months after his 22nd birthday.

The human mind, amazing machine that it is, can make a traumatic event seem like it happened decades ago and just yesterday at the same time.

When I look back at what happened those years ago, the memory is still so clear; every detail, every moment is outlined so sharply that I feel as though it happened last week.

In the same vein, it seems that he never lived at all, that my mind just conjured the ordeal up from something I read in a novel.

I remember every detail of that frigid day, from the phone call I received on my lunch break to the start of the heavy drinking that followed in the evening. I remember the horrific song that was playing when I got the news (“Lightening Crashes” by Live), individual words of the calls I had to make after, and the remarkably difficult days that followed.

He had been a fearless young fighting buck, a scarily strong bodybuilder with a goatee as red as his Scandinavian skin. His strength was useless, however, against the freak medical condition that took him. He had been like an older brother to me over the years, had even saved my life once, and his stunningly sudden death shook me to my core.

It snowed hard that day, as it did the day they lowered him into the ground, as if God himself was sobbing frozen tears, guilty of the old cliché of taking a man who was too young.

It was years before I considered myself “normal” again, before I could talk or think about him without choking back tears. Certain songs would launch me into a rage, while too much drink could have me cursing God in a sloppy, slurring fashion.

I wanted to learn Latin so I could yell at Him in his own language, because I knew He wasn't paying attention to my whiskey-soaked rants.

But time has a way of leveling things off, softening the body shots that life gives you as the years progress. It made me realize that “grieving” was not, in fact, synonymous with “raging,” and that memories of the dead do not always beget tears. I even visited his grave a couple times, even though both trips were treacherously difficult.

And so I sat at a dark Irish bar on the five year anniversary of his death with a couple of our closest friends, as well as his own younger brother, a carbon copy of the dead man in so many ways.

There was no more crying into the bottom of a pint-glass, as those days have since passed - lighthearted stories and jokes took its place. But we still knew that his specter sat in the corner, silently reminding us of why we were at a bar on a Tuesday night.

 As the hours passed and the stream of Jameson continued to flow, however, our smiling eyes softened, and the night inevitably turned to those memories that we don't talk about much. For a while, we allowed the sadness to envelop us once more and felt the pain that we'd buried for so long.

On the way home, though, it struck me how warm this night had been, in stark contrast to how bitter it was in 2005. For a moment, there was even that smell in the air that comes only when spring is emerging after the long dying time is over, announcing to the world that life is resurrected.

Maybe those shadows do rise to walk again, I thought.

Sometimes it takes a true tragedy to make brooding people like me realize that we truly must live life only for the living, because the sun is rising tomorrow, and to do otherwise would be to dishonor the fallen who never had that chance for success… or redemption.

So for the first time in a long time, I can simply say, “Rest in peace amigo.” I will see you at the crossroads.

Biker Bars...don't believe the hype

Wednesday, August 11, 2010

BY STEVE JANOSKI

He was a big man with graying hair and a gravelly voice that carried the weight of years in every word.

"This place is nothin' man," he told me. "I bounced in a bar once years back…that place was rough. I been shot, stabbed, beat up…"

He went on to tell me about the time that two rival outlaw gangs got into a rumble at that bar—by the end of the night, a cop was shot and members of both clubs were mangled.

He had the battle scars in the form of a cluster of missing teeth to back up his stories, but I could tell he wasn't the lying type anyway.

He stood next to me at the bar and listened to the blues band for a couple songs before excusing himself outside to have a smoke.

It's hard to find bars around here where things like that happen anymore.



Moreover, it was in what we were doing: standing at the bar, drinking a beer, listening to a blues band, and telling some stories.

That's the reality of biker bars, right there. It's not fancy, and nothing that's anywhere near as brutal as the movies would like you to think.

In researching local biker bars for a recent article, I've found that the idea that there's blood on the floor every night is the stereotype that the bar owners seem to be trying to combat, and I don't blame them.

The amount of comments I get when I wear a "Great Notch Inn" t-shirt is mind-boggling, with most of them being along the lines of "I can't believe you go there!"

"Do you believe it?" I tell them. "And I haven't been shot once!"

Honestly, I've found these places to be safer than the college bars in the area, probably because of the intimidation factor that the clientele brings with them; the odds of a 21-year-old kid starting a problem shrink exponentially when a massive, bald-headed biker with "SS" tattooed on his neck is sitting right next to him.

But biker bars are full of guys who go to the bar for the same reason that the doctor or accountant do: to have a beer and relax. The fact that they ride in on a bike doesn't make any difference once they're in the door.

I have been in the worst places that North Jersey has to offer, from the seediest Paterson strip club to the hardest biker bar in the boonies, and yet the only problems I've ever had came about because I was looking for trouble myself.

When people say they're scared to go into a place like West Milford's Mountain Rest or the Great Notch, I tell them that, as clichéd as it sounds, follow the rule that Patrick Swayze gave his bouncers in the legendary film "Roadhouse" — be nice.

That one piece of advice will let you sit at nearly any bar in the country and have nary a worry, because bikers, like all other people, like to be treated with respect.

Common courtesies like holding the door open for someone, saying "please" or "thank you," and apologizing if you bump into a guy or spill a drink will get you a long way in these places, just like they do anywhere else.

Of course, don't get me wrong. If you walk into one of these places looking for trouble, you could quickly be in a world of hurt, but that rule tends to be the same in any bar.

The cold reality is that for all of the attention they receive in movies, television, and magazines, the "Double Deuces" of the world tend to get shut down because the real world has things like zoning boards, liquor licenses, and laws.

Are there motorcycle gangs that break the law? Sure. Are they going to do it in public, or risk getting locked up because of some dumb kid starting trouble at the bar? Not likely.

So give these places a shot next time you want to get out on Friday night. They've got character that is nowhere to be found in the soulless service bars of the chain restaurants of the world, and you might just meet some interesting folks that you didn't think you'd befriend otherwise.

Although if Sam Elliott walks in…you should probably leave.