Matador Network's Blog, page 2318

1 trick to better packing

SOMEHOW I missed this the first time it went around the internet, but anyway, if you study the way this guy packs, there’s a key trick that let’s him get so much into his bag so neatly. He calls it the “clown car style of packing that my mother taught me.”

Basically the trick is “nesting” the tops in alternating directions with the sleeves folded in, but then letting the tails hang out of the bag until everything’s laid in. Once it’s all in, the tails are then folded back like a huge interlocking piece. Pretty clever. I’ve always been more of a “roll and stuff” man myself, but I’m trying this next time. How about y’all?

How to piss off a Millennial

Photo: Jaclyn Auletta

Hi! We’re the Millennials, the much-maligned group of people born between 1980 and the early 2000s, and since we’ll be footing the bill for your retirement homes (and, you know, everything your generation decided to just go ahead and put on the credit card), here are some things you can avoid doing to make sure we don’t find a green, energy-efficient use for the corpses of Baby Boomers.

Be bitchy about us living at home.

Yeah. We love living with our parents. It makes partying and getting laid super easy. And you know, we’d love to move out, but when you guys were put in charge of the education system, you said, “You know what would make education even better? If it was prohibitively expensive!” So we’re stuck paying 50% of the salary from our minimum wage (if we’re lucky) internship, and the other 50% on gasoline and food.

Tell us we’re “not willing to work.”

You know, the iceberg that sank the Titanic was already a dick for punching a big hole in the hull of an unsinkable boat, but if he’d turned around and snarkily asked the drowning, hypothermic bodies why they weren’t more willing to swim, he would’ve been a complete and total bitch. Also, enjoy that iceberg metaphor while you can, because our kids won’t be able to understand the concept of ice.

Force your failed politics on us.

We’ve already changed the game politically, and you can see the manic desperation as the Baby Boomers are slowly aging out and trying to convince us to do the things they’ve always done. Just the most recent example is New York Times columnist David Brooks’ moronic article saying, “Hey, I smoked as a kid, but you shouldn’t be allowed to because grumble grumble I don’t like these young stoner whippersnappers!” That’s a direct quote. Look it up. (Editors note: That is not a direct quote.)

We’re going to end prohibition, and we’re going to be a better society for it. We’re also actively making the world a better place for the LGBTQ crowd, and we’re finally starting to tackle the environmental problems the older generations have left us. So kindly keep your weird comments about butt sex being “illogical” and climate change being a hoax because you saw a snowflake to yourselves.

Every generation is a revolution. We’ll have to accept that ourselves in 30 years or so, as our kids start noticing our failures. But for the time being, step aside, bitches, we got work to do.

Call our music shitty.

Frank Sinatra once said that rock ‘n’ roll is “sung, played, and written for the most part by cretinous goons. It manages to be the martial music of every sideburned delinquent on the face of the earth.” It’s a time-honored tradition for the older generation to call the younger generation’s music “just noise.” See jazz, swing, rock, heavy metal, hip hop, techno, house, and electronic music. First: Technically, all noises are “just noise.” Second: Why don’t you just cut to the chase and tell us to get off your lawn?

A note to all Millennials out there: Let’s be cool about our kids’ music. This ridiculous trend of musical curmudgeonliness needs to end with us.

Call us narcissistic and entitled.

Last year, the fading anachronism known as “TIME Magazine” published an article about us called “The Me Me Me Generation.” The subtitle was, “Millennials are lazy, entitled narcissists who still live with their parents,” with an ass-covering “Why they’ll save us all” tacked on to the end.

Seriously: Blow me me me, TIME. Yes, we want the best for ourselves. We are not company men. We want to be fulfilled by our work, and fulfilled by our lives. So yeah, we’re less willing to settle. I’m at a loss as to why that’s a bad thing.

Pretend the selfie is a sign of the apocalypse.

You know, we’ve had these shiny glass things for centuries that serve the same function as the selfie. They’re called fucking mirrors. Unless you’ve never checked yourself out in one, let’s not pretend the selfie is indicative of some sort of deeper narcissism.

Call us “Millennials.”

It’s just a horrible nickname. Millennials? Really? Y2K was not even a thing. It’s hardly our most defining attribute. To be fair, we haven’t had a decently named generation in 50 years. Hemingway got to belong to the “Lost Generation” which is an awesome name for a generation. My grandparents got to belong to the “Silent Generation.” The people before them were the “Greatest Generation.” After that, generation names have sucked. “Baby Boomers?” “Generation X?” They’re also trying to call the Millennials “Generation Y” (which is a horrible idea, unless we’re absolutely sure there’s only one generation left to name), and — I’m serious — “Generation 9/11.”

Yeah. We’ll take that if our grandparents will take “Generation Holocaust” and if our parents take “Generation Reagan.” Come on, guys. We can do better than this.

Lump us all together.

This is true for any generation: We’ve only been around for a quarter of a century. The oldest of us are barely over 30. Most of us don’t even have kids yet. So our effect on the world is TBD. You don’t yet know what we’ll do: The Baby Boomers seemed like they were gonna change the world in the ’60s, but then they gave us Reagan, Clinton, and the Bushes. The ones of us that are prominent now may not be the ones that determine our generation’s defining characteristics in the history books.

We are diverse. We are legion. We are Millennials. Look out world. And hey, we’re not moving back in or anything, but we need to crash at home for just, like, a couple of weeks while we try to get back on our feet. [image error]

30+ couples married at the Grammys

I grew up on the MTV Music Awards of the 1990s, so beyond celebrating hardworking musicians, I’ve never thought the Grammy Awards were that exciting. However, when I heard that 30 couples, made up of heterosexual, homosexual, and interracial members, were to be married on live television during the awards, I had to give the Grammys some props.

While some feel the mass wedding – officiated by Queen Latifah, who signed the marriage certificates herself – was gimmicky, I respect it more than watching Lady Gaga hatching from an egg. To skip the song and watch the marriage ceremony, fast-forward to 4:27.

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, who scored big at the Grammys with four awards, are swiftly becoming leaders in the gay-rights movement by broadcasting their message through hip-hop music. Their performance of “Same Love,” and inclusion of the couples, was inspiring for me to watch, and helped me feel hopeful about a future of acceptance that affects many of the people I know.

Read more at Mother Jones.

Musical pilgrimage in Memphis, TN

A visit to Memphis is a pilgrimage to the birthplace of all contemporary music. It’s where disparate musical cultures collided to meld into Rock N Roll and Soul. It’s a city whose history has impacted this country and the entire planet.

Photos: Author

At the Rock N Soul Museum just off Beale Street, you learn that millions of people left Southern farms for Memphis between the 1930s and 1960s. These sharecroppers and subsistence farmers brought with them the music that helped to cure the pain of toil.

Blacks brought the blues and field music they sang at work, along with the gospel music of church choirs. Whites brought the country and honky tonk sounds they’d heard their grandpappies play on the porches of their one-room shacks.

Mechanization made manual labor obsolete, so these rural residents left their agrarian lifestyle in Arkansas, Tennessee, and Mississippi for the burgeoning metropolis, Memphis. Things didn’t necessarily get better in the city, but musical traditions were exchanged, and there was an industry waiting to record them and radio stations enthusiastically broadcasting these new sounds.

Memphis and the greater South have had a long history of segregation. So many of the stories about whites and blacks working together in the ’50s and ’60s are often exceptions to institutionalized racism. But the ephemeral power of music can bridge these divides.

The mantra of white business owners like Sam Phillips was to record everyone and everything. Some teenagers in Clarksdale, MS heard about the “white man in Memphis who records anyone,” so they traveled a few hours north to Sun Studio. En route, one of their guitar amps fell off the back of the car and got severely busted. They didn’t have time to repair it, so they went straight to the studio to perform. Jackie Brenston & His Delta Cats (who were really Ike Turner & the Kings Of Rhythm) performed “Rocket 88” with distorted guitars. Sam Phillips sat in the booth and liked what he heard, so he mixed the distortion prominently on the recording. This happenstance came to be regarded as the first Rock N Roll song in the history of the world.

A similarly chance encounter happened when a young crooner named Elvis took a break from his day job to record a few songs at Sun Studio. Sam Phillips didn’t think the kid was talented, but Elvis became a fixture at the studio and eventually Phillips put him on a track that he liked. “That’s All Right” became an instant hit when an influential Memphis DJ couldn’t stop playing it.

A few years later Elvis was a superstar. He bought his Rock N Roll palace at Graceland when he was 21. Along with a glimpse into his gaudy taste in shag carpeting, visiting Graceland is a reminder of how hugely influential Elvis Presley was. He was able to bring Rock N Roll to mainstream white teens who reveled in his rebelliousness. He helped to launch youth culture through his music and films. Elvis’s impact can be seen on the weeping faces of fans from Germany and Minnesota and Japan and Florida and India as they stare at his grave. His global influence brought rock music to the world.

While Elvis was enjoying his kingdom at Graceland, many black Memphians were living in poverty. In 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King came to Memphis in support of the city’s sanitation workers who wanted dignity and a decent wage. As they prepared for the protest, the civil rights leader was shot as he stood on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel. Today the site is preserved as part of the National Civil Rights Museum to honor the legacy of Dr. King. The weeping faces at the Lorraine Motel are more powerful than those at Graceland, because where Elvis showed off his harmonies, Dr. King showed us how to live together in harmony. That dream remains for future generations.

Hope for the future of Memphis can be seen at the Stax Museum of American Soul Music. The Soulsville Foundation also operates a charter school and music academy to help local children excel. Stax was home to Rufus Thomas, Isaac Hayes, Booker T & The MGs, The Mar-Keys, and The Bar-Kays. This raw Memphis soul sound rivaled Motown’s pristine harmonies, because like Sun Studio this label had a Rock N Roll attitude and put everything on tape, emphasizing that distortion, that rawness, that funkiness. That sound was able to permeate the world.

Memphis is home to many world-class museums that keep the memory of the past alive. But a problem with historicizing Memphis is that you might feel like all of the positives and negatives of the past are already done. The city still has pockets of poverty that are the direct result of segregationist policy. The city still has a vibrant hip hop and indie rock scene. Memphis is still emerging.

But like the music that had its origins in this city, and later became the blueprint for contemporary rock or the actual notes being re-sampled by hip hop, the city is remixing itself. Its sounds are still being broadcast around the globe, and those signals are now permeating the cosmos. [image error]

Josh was a guest of Memphis Travel on this trip.

How music kept this Holocaust survivor alive

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day.

THIS IS George Horner. He’s 90 years old and helped to keep people’s spirits up in the concentration camp where he was imprisoned by playing music. Without music, George says, “I wouldn’t be alive.”

Visit NBCNews.com for breaking news, world news, and news about the economy

An account of the Mandela funeral

Locals make their way to the roadside of the N2 to watch the funeral procession. All photos by author.

WITH MANDELA’S DEATH, all normal work arrangements for journalists were suspended. It was raining when I left for his hometown of Qunu, deep in South Africa’s Eastern Cape, and I assumed the new tyres and suspension on my car would handle the roads just as well as they’d done every time over the years.

I wasn’t worried. I knew these roads. In the time I’d been studying journalism, I’d done my share of exploring. Cruising through village after village on my way north, I’d slow each time to have a passing look for anything that might photograph well. Good light, symbols, anything interesting.

As I approached the hills towards Qunu, I saw a woman who’d gone off the slick road in her SUV. But she had help so I didn’t stop. I had somewhere to be. Didn’t think about why her car might’ve lost control.

The road signs ahead had that bendy arrow that warns of turns — which were, by now, more than apparent — and a speed limit reduced to 80km/h. I knew the roads here weren’t great, so I slowed to 70 as I took an incline…and felt the car start to slide.

Corrected. Failed. Sliding. Brakes. In seconds I’d come to rest in a storm gutter.

Each time I go back to the Eastern Cape, I seem to get stranded. I get this feeling it’s trying to keep me there.

I called ahead to a colleague already in Qunu who came to collect me, and once the towing of my vehicle had been arranged, it was back off into the grey and the rain. North to Qunu, and Mandela’s final funeral.

A town under lockdown

Casspirs like these dotted the rural landscape.

The security presence in Qunu was unprecedented. A police officer told me that 6,000 South African Police Service members had been recruited from Johannesburg alone. Armoured vehicles dotted the rural landscape.

The military and police made it difficult for journalists to go anywhere near the dome or burial site, declared a national security site and therefore illegal to photograph. Speculation amongst those there to cover the event is that a media house bought out the rights to photograph the funeral, and the security designation was simply an expedient way of protecting their commercial interest.

A couple of days before the funeral, journalists who had rented homes in the village, not far from the Mandela home and from the burial grounds, were evicted by police, who told them they were a security threat.

Supply and demand

Gloria Ngcibitshana rented rooms to journalists.

The scramble for accommodation by members of the international press was absurd. Hundreds of journalists swarmed into the tiny village, and what accommodation wasn’t already taken by police and the military was gobbled up by the press.

A rondawel (thatch hut) with no running water, a double bed for two (whether you were a couple or not) and a basin to wash in would rent for $50-80 per night. For those who had showers could expect $200 per night at best. Locals eagerly converted whatever space they could into something that could fit guests, kicking their sons out of their rooms and onto the floors so as to make the most of the opportunity in this otherwise cash-strapped part of the country.

Gloria Ngcibitshana was living about a kilometre from the Mandela home, and had prepared two rooms at a price of $80 a person. My room for the night clearly belonged to her son. Tools and a football poster were on the wall, with the odd jacket in the open closet. Bare wires connected an extension cord from elsewhere to a multiplug. There were no switches. Electricity comes from one municipal box, and extension cords run through the house, and often to neighbours if need be. To turn off the light, you must risk electrocution — something that happens regularly in homes like these — and pull the plug out of the adapter whilst avoiding the bare wires.

A dream deferred

Lungiso (last name withheld) flies a South African flag on a post near his home.

Those who live in the Eastern Cape will tell you how poor conditions can be in some parts of the province. It has the lowest infrastructure budget of all the provinces in the country, and its high proportion of rural livelihoods is testimony to that. Villages here survive on subsistence farming and herding, with possibly one or two family members making it to Mthatha to find basic, menial work. Others travel as far as Johannesburg or Cape Town to eke out some kind of existence. The idea, much like any migrant labourer system, is to send money back to your family for their survival — though the reward for striking out towards greener pastures is not always realised.

Despite not being invited to the funeral — and so forbidden from approaching any of the main sites — many locals were up the next day, eager to pay what respects they could to Mandela, lining the roadside to see the procession that would carry his body into Qunu for burial.

But things ran late. One group of Xhosa men stood for hours waiting for the procession, which was supposed to happen at 11am, and actually only made its way through at about 2pm.

Only 600 locals were allowed to attend the burial, and these were predominantly family and extended family of the Mandelas, plus village elders and leaders. Traditionally, such a funeral would be an open event, where people could come in during the day to pay their last respects, regardless of how they were connected to the deceased. The residents of Qunu noticed.

Road home

A young man films the funeral procession on his phone.

The funeral ended and Brenton and I headed back to the provincial capital of Mthatha, trying to beat the traffic.

We stopped for some cheap coffee and — at a boundary roadblock at the edge of Qunu — pulled to one side and debated going through. On this side, we could move freely and shoot. On the other, home, our hotel, filing, and rest.

We sat in the car for a few minutes, but there was nothing left to shoot. It was all over. Just us clinging to that feeling of being where history was happening, and not wanting to leave.

That night was pizza and story-swapping with the other photogs. The next morning an early rise, an apple for breakfast, and a slower and more calculated trip home. If the Eastern Cape was trying to hold onto me, it was too tired to reach out anymore. It’s mind, most likely, somewhere else.

Where people baked people

Photo: Álvaro

AT AUSCHWITZ, Dad and I walk along a rutted path. A metal sign above the entrance reads: ARBEIT MACHT FREI. I wonder if the camp Grandma survived was like this. Dad tells me we’ve been here before, some time around when the Berlin Wall fell, when I was a boy and we lived in Poland. I don’t remember it.

We enter a sagging two-story building. The middle of what once must have been straight-cut rectangular stone steps are worn shallow. This building was a house, because off the entryway a kitchen takes up a corner. Wooden floors creak with the weight of people. What could have been a living room smells like dust.

Clusters of tourists walk around the room. Plastic panels section walls into cubicles. I stand in front of one of the panels and stare at a white haystack-size pile that looks like wool. Then, I notice a set of pigtails next to each other, a French braid, and toupee-like tuft.

A sign next to the walls says the pile contains two tons of human hair. All this white was once brown, but grayed, and then lost all color. The sign says the hair was used to make carpet.

I move to the next cubicle. A pile of shoes. Then, I pick out individual soles with patches. Others have holes.

I move to the next cubicle. A pile of glasses, the lenses busted out. Some of the frames are neatly folded.

I move to the next cubicle. Crutches lean together like a stack of wood to be burned, the ashes scattered, the evidence gone. There are several fake legs.

The piles grow. The room compresses. I shudder.

I leave the building. I don’t even know where Dad is inside. I don’t sit on any of the stone steps, because I don’t want to touch the ruin.

While I wait for Dad, I spot a sign. There’s information everywhere. The sign notes the two reasons why this place was built: The answer to the final solution and destruction through work.

The sign explains: Workers took an armful of bricks as far as they could walk in half a day and dropped it off, and then took another armful of bricks and moved it back to where they began. The next day they did the same. And then the next day did the same. And the next, and the next, and the next.

Would a slow awful death be worse than a quick awful death? I don’t have an answer. I don’t know annihilation like this. No name, just a number. Then, a tally.

Back in America, the largest burial ground I’ve been to is Arlington National Cemetery, where white headstones crest over the rolling green lawns. All those soldiers are celebrated and have marked names. Here, though, the sign says there are one million people on 50 acres. One body under every two square feet. It could only be done by burning bodies down to ashes and mixing ashes with dirt.

I think this place should be leveled, because I feel uncomfortable reading the numbers and walking on death. But I forgot what should be unforgettable. This place has become the opposite of its purpose. Even forgotten, this place is still here. Proof to remember.

When Dad comes out of the building, he doesn’t ask me how I’m doing and I don’t ask to leave. I say that I want to see the ovens. Where people baked people. I believe I need to witness it myself so I don’t forget again.

At a low-to-the-ground, boxcar-size building, I read another sign about the crematorium. Guards said the only exit was through the chimney. People shoveling people into ovens wrote their accounts on scraps of paper, put the paper in jars, and then buried the jars in the ground. They wrote on the paper to testify to what was happening. It must have been as unbelievable as it still is now.

I don’t really talk to Dad as we leave. We just go. I think about how people revert to talking about the weather when there’s nothing to say. White clouds swab the sky-blue sky. It’s ridiculous to expect sleet storms and mucky roads and freezing wind in summer. I want to remember this place without beauty. I turn around to weed-covered train tracks cutting under brick arches through the place. The rails almost converge into a vanishing point.

* * *

In the kitchen of the second floor of an apartment building, I warm my hands around a cup of Nescafé. The freeze-dried coffee has a hint of cocoa flavor. It almost tastes like hot chocolate since it was made with steamed milk.

While in Krakow, Dad and I are staying with Małgorzata, a Polish friend of Mom’s. Dad is out for a walk. In addition to making me the Nescafé, Małgorzata has set a tub of margarine, a plate of ham, slices of tomatoes, and a glazed loaf of chałka — egg bread baked in a braid — on the center of an oak table.

I’m sitting in the corner with a view of the room. Małgorzata washes dishes a few feet away with an apron wrapped around her waist and a dishtowel slung over her shoulder. Natural light comes in through a glass sliding door, slightly opened out onto the balcony.

Greg, Małgorzata’s nephew who lives above her apartment, has stopped by to visit. He seems more like a younger brother since they look close in age, both with hints of graying hair. Greg has told me about how this summer he returned to Poland, escaping from Chicago’s imploding construction industry. His English sounds as fluent as a natural-born American citizen. He said he left because there are too few buildings for too many contractors. He got out while he could, selling his house just before the market flooded.

“So,” Greg asks, “what did you do today?”

“Udali sie do Auschwitz,” Małgorzata says over her shoulder.

The name sounds German in any language you speak it.

“The camps?” Greg asks. He tilts his head, wanting to know what I think about it.

I don’t know how to explain that feeling of not being able to escape yourself. So, I just exhale and cool my coffee.

“Us Poles are tough,” Greg says. He raises his hand, reaches out, but stops and sets his hand back on the table. If Greg knew me better, then he would probably pat me on the shoulder.

Crumbs dot my plate. I can’t remember eating an open-faced sandwich. I’m full, but I wasn’t even hungry.

“My grandma was in one of those places,” I say. I never asked for details. I didn’t want to know. Now that I’ve seen the worst place, I’m curious what she experienced.

“Everyone knows someone,” Małgorzata says.

“That’s right,” Greg says. “We survived. All of us. It’s like Szymborska wrote—”

“Who?” I ask.

“She won the Nobel Prize,” Greg says, as if giving me a clue.

I’m sure I should know who this is, but I don’t and I shrug.

Greg waves his hand like it’s nothing and explains, “In a poem, she writes a view isn’t a view, except by a person who sees it.”

“The whole thing is translated in English?” I ask.

“The Polish is beautiful, so simple,” Greg says. “But yes, the English, even though a different language, means the same.”

Małgorzata’s little gray cat Myszku walks through the kitchen to the balcony. He is barely big enough to hold in my hand. I laughed when they told me his name meant “mouse.”

I think about other small things that clump and pile: dirt and ashes. Each individual becomes part of a collection. A shape, a mass, a list.

A shadow passes my face. The natural light cuts on and then off as Myszku struts in front of the bars on the balcony. He is full of life. Myszku wiggles through the metal, coils at the edge, and then leaps out into the open backyard.

21 reasons Portland is the ultimate college town

Photo: Eric Bjerke

1. It has some of the cheapest rent in the country. Fresh out of college, my 780 sq. ft. apartment runs me just over $600 (with utilities and internet).

2. It’s still a foodie heaven for the broke college student, with food cart pods possibly outnumbering restaurants, where you can get a vegan burrito, a fried pie, poutine French fries, and a basil lemonade for under $10.

3. Keep Portland Weird — Portland, Oregon…a place that prides itself on just how weird it is. Go ahead, Google it. It’s a place where the below is an everyday occurrence. So at a time when you’re discovering who you are, it’s the best place for you to experiment and to push boundaries, and a place that will love you no matter who you turn out to be.

4. As the “big city with a small town feel,” Portland is a friendly community, so you’re bound to make new acquaintances and run into familiar faces at the same haunts, though it’s just big enough that you won’t have to if that’s not your thing.

5. It’s a young and liberal place, where most of the locals are excited by fresh faces and outside ideas. Unlike in other cities, they won’t make you feel guilty for being from somewhere else.

6. With a serious biking culture and public transit system, it’s very easy to get plugged in, and in some cases having a car actually makes it more difficult to get from point A to point B.

7. There’s a city, 4 mountains (some of which are volcanoes), some hot springs, the high desert, a temperate rainforest, and coastline all within an hour and a half of each other. As a bonus, that coastline is littered with wild-growing magic mushrooms, and there are endless miles of forests to trek while those fungi digest.

8. Thanks to all the rain, everything is green, from the Douglas fir trees to the pot.

9. It has a sweet music scene. You’ll see your favorite artist play in a tiny coffeeshop, and probably get to hang out with them after the show.

10. Geek Love. Portland is a hub for geek culture, being home to both Dark Horse Comics and Oni Press headquarters (and a myriad of indie comic publishers), such events as Trek in the Park (a weekly live-action reenactment of Star Trek episodes in July), and dozens of board-game shops. If you loved comics or games as a kid, in Portland you can continue to love them with like-minded individuals.

11. Zoo bombing: The Portland Zoo sits atop a monstrous hill and droves of teens and college students use said hill to get wasted, dress in costumes, and ride children’s bikes and scooters down at break-neck speeds.

12. Santa Rampage (aka SantaCon): In the words of Chuck Palahniuk: “Drinking a hallucinogenic liqueur — made by soaking marijuana in rum, called ‘Reindeer Fucker’ — the jolly ‘red tide’ of several hundred Santa Clauses crashes elegant holiday parties, storms through swanky restaurants, boogies in strip clubs, and generally keeps Portland’s Central Precinct busy and paranoid.”

13. Vegan strip clubs. Portland loves its strip clubs — it’s a weird part of its culture, with such vegan strip clubs as Casa Diablo at the top of the list. The food is vegan, the strippers are vegan, and it shows up on your bill as a vegan restaurant. What’s not to love?

14. Between the strip-club culture, the naked bike parades, the Pride festival, and Reed College’s freshman initiation, you’re bound to run into a naked person at some point in your college career.

15. Portland also loves its beer, and its 124 craft breweries have put it on the map as one of the microbrew capitals of the country.

16. Speaking of beer, Portland has found a way to add drinking to all your favorite activities, from living room theaters to world-famous bar-cades.

17. Nearly every major neighborhood of the city has 2-3 pub-crawl circuits, or you can cruise with friends or make some new ones on a brewcycle.

18. Did I mention Portland loves its beer? You can now fill a growler at many gas stations and convenience stores, which feature up to 30 signature microbrews on tap.

19. It’s got every cuisine imaginable, ranging from traditional ethnic cuisine to truly “Portland” concoctions, like the bacon-brie-basil savory waffle from the Waffle Window.

20. The unanimous excitement from your fellow college students (and envy of any friend who’s ever been to Portland) when they see this.

21. It’s exactly like Portlandia. Seriously.

What to remember about the Holocaust

TODAY IS INTERNATIONAL HOLOCAUST REMEMBRANCE DAY. Of course when I think about it, what comes to mind first isn’t the Holocaust, but my own memories of growing up Jewish and feeling conflicted about so many things. On one hand I felt a connection to the people I went to Sunday School with, to temple with. We were…what exactly? The smart kids in school? (Oftentimes, yes). The outcasts? (Oftentimes, yes). The kids whose parents hugged you and kissed you in a way that Christian families didn’t. The “chosen people”? The characters in Adam Sandler’s Hanukkah song? What was that exactly?

This was the cultural identity we shared, something I still very much feel. But on the other hand, I didn’t know about the religious part. It’s always felt somewhat like watching a movie after you’ve missed the first 20 minutes.

Mixed up in all of this was the Holocaust. My parents had lots of books on the Holocaust, and as a young kid I was morbidly fascinated by the images of stacks of shoes, the corpses tossed into huge piles. I read Elie Wiesel, Maus, and so many other books whose names and authors I’ve forgotten.

And in an adolescent way, I identified with all kinds of emotions, a borrowed guilt and rage, until it was almost like the experience of the Holocaust touched part of my story, which it didn’t. I knew people growing up whose parents were survivors. And throughout the years and my travels to Buenos Aires, I’ve even met a few survivors.

But my own family had immigrated to the US well before WWII, and looking back on it now, I realize how much I objectified, how much I appropriated the Holocaust when I was young. There was this sense that “this thing happened” and I should always remember because one day I might have to defend myself, my family, whoever it is.

And while that may be true, what I wish I’d focused on wasn’t the horror and evil but the people themselves. That instead of reducing them down to “victims,” I should always remember that their stories continued — continue to this day.

Take a minute to witness the story of Martin Greenfield above. Think about how he treats people, how to him, each person is “a perfect person.” Think about what he has accomplished and the way he’s done it. This is what to remember. That even the Holocaust couldn’t kill this in him.

Mapped: Alcohol consumption by state

Beer consumption per capita (in gallons)

Wine consumption per capita (in gallons)

Liquor consumption per capita (in gallons)

I TEACH an English class in Japan, and during our holiday party last month we talked about Christmas and New Years, exchanged gifts, and listened to “I Saw Mommy Kissing Santa Claus” a few times. My co-teacher, a Japanese woman, explained that in Japan the days before December 31st are a time of serious and solemn contemplation, while in the US the end of the year is a time to get crazy. She pantomimed taking a big drink of something and the class laughed.

My main job in the class is to talk about myself in English, so I told them in my family we drink wine and egg nog with rum or brandy on Christmas and champagne and cocktails on New Years. One year we had Four Loko on Christmas Eve, but I didn’t tell them that.

What do most Americans drink during the rest of the year? The Beer Institute collects information on the consumption, by state, of beer, wine, and liquor. In their Beer Almanac, they divide consumption by state to determine the average consumption of each per capita. The maps above show the 2011 numbers. Hover your mouse over your state to see what your fellow citizens are getting trashed on.