💪🤓 : Working Out, When You're a Nerd

I've been working out for a while now -- close to a year, maybe? -- which isn't so impressive in the greater scheme of things, or at least it isn't so impressive when you're a normal person, but considering I belong to the muscle-less minority and, for the first 30 or so years of my life, my greatest caloric expenditure was bobbing my head to They Might Be Giants songs, this is pretty notable. If I do say so myself.

Nerds Who Work Out

BY MATTHUE ROTH • JANUARY 16, 2018 • ESSAY

I started working out because I am cheap. There a zillion amazing things about working for Google, including free lunch (yes they order in kosher stuff for me) (but from a steakhouse, and I’m a vegetarian, so I eat a lot of pasta), but because I am a contractor — yes, even though I’ve worked here for 2 years — I don’t get basic things like healthcare.

So I feel this need to take advantage of every little bit of free stuff that does come my way.

At least, that’s what I told myself when I started. I really wasn’t prepared for this.

I wasn’t ready for working out to run my life.

<<read the rest>>

The Way Smoke Smells

So I really love going into the conference room at this day job, and I just realized why. Everyone who smokes goes through the conference room and into the fire escape, and so there's a residue, not of smoke, but of sort of pre-smoke and post-smoke, maybe the smell ignited by freshly burning paper, or a special smell that only happens at the moment when a match strikes?

It reminds me of my aunt's house growing up, and of inch-high shag carpeting, and of the '70s. No word on whether there's a bunch of furtive, antisocial Siamese cats patrolling around the office, but I'll keep you updated.

Six simple things about today I wouldn't have noticed

1.
I love this book. Love it unconditionally. It's sloppy, and the basic premise is something I would have taken to heart ten years ago and now I look at it through the eyes of someone who tells stories for a living and think, that's not a story, but I remember the person I was when I would have loved it. And that makes me kind of believe in things again like a story about losing your soul and then trying to find it.

2.
Also, when you're reading it and walking down the street, it kind of makes you think things you wouldn't otherwise think.

3.
I got off the train early, returned some library books. One of them was The Pale King, the last novel David Foster Wallace wrote before he died. It's huge, and I barely made a dent in it. Too much stuff going on in my life, I thought, and too many other books to read instead. As I slipped it in the return slot, I wondered what my past three weeks would have been like if I'd been reading The Pale King. How radically it would have changed, my conversations, my experiences, what I chose to do on my lunch breaks and at night, after the kids are in bed, the parts of my life that are still my own. If my life would have changed at all.

4.
I walked fast across the park and down the street to my office. There was this girl walking beside me, also fast. Fast walkers are kind of united in our brusqueness and our no-nonsense attitude, our force of will to get things done, and we all kind of hate each other. This girl and I were walking at exactly the same pace, and right next to each other. We didn't make eye contact at all. She probably didn't even realize I was there. It was me with the book, her with these intense military knee boots and a killer stomp. Sexy boots and a sort of messed-up face, the kind that isn't symmetrical but you can't put your finger on why. We pass a nanny and her kids and we both swerve in opposite directions, then we're right back in line. We hit the corner of my work, she turned right, I kept going.

5.
The subways were psycho today. There was fog, mad fog, and at my outdoor subway station, you couldn't see more than five feet in front of you. People kept staring down the tracks, looking for that ghostly light. It took forever. Ten minutes, fifteen, and then in the fog, a faint yellow pair of eyes, that subway, creeping ever forward. It was packed. We had to force our way on, and then more people forcing their way on. I was one of the last people to actually fit. Or maybe everyone thinks that. At the next stop, this fat kid with a good smile apologized to everyone as he squeezed on, "Sorry, I got to get to work." The stop after that, a fat woman stepped on and literally swished smaller people into each other. I don't mean to call out fat people, I'm sorry it sounds bad, but this morning it seemed like nobody but fat people were even attempting to get on the train. A disembodied woman's voice yelled in our car at each station, "There is no more fucking room!" We all agreed with her. But she sounded more violent each time, and we were afraid to agree. The last stop before we dipped underground, the train stalled for ten minutes. A man's and woman's voices yelled at each other from outside. All the people on the platform, the people who couldn't get in, watched the offscreen drama. Someone said somebody should call 911. I wondered why that person didn't. I wasn't sure if it was really going to get bad, if it was just two people who didn't know each other yelling at each other, or what. I thought about the potential of calling 911 just to say that people weren't getting along, and there were bad vibes everywhere, and could they help out with that. I couldn't call 911. I couldn't reach my phone. My arms were pinned by too many people on every side.

6.
The lobby at my work was, for once, empty. An elevator was right there. A woman slipped into the building just as I was getting on and I held it for her. She hit 6, and then 5. "Sorry," she said. "I didn't realize." "That's okay," I said, "it'll be an adventure." She smiled at me as though having an adventure was the last thing in this world she could conceive of. She smiled at me like she needed an adventure. She got off at 5. The elevator stopped again at 6 and I got ready, instinctively, to step out. Then I realized it wasn't my floor and froze in the doorway. The elevator door held open. The elevator was still. I could have stepped out. Anything could have happened, then, anything in the world.

About Those Games I've Been Working On...

You probably won't be going to the Games for Change conference -- it's a convention that brings together video games and positive social change -- but if you are, some of my posse will be making appearances and talking about some of the video games I've been writing. Here's part of the write-up for our presentation:

As a major part of its effort to reinvent elementary and secondary school curriculum, Amplify Learning is producing an ambitious portfolio of digital games. For the first time, these designers, from across the United States and the United Kingdom, are gathering at a public event to discuss this work and share what they have done so far. 

And here is what they're saying about the games. It's the most anyone has said (meaning, more than anything I've been allowed to say) about what they are.

Micro-Presentations from Game Developers:

• Jesse Schell (Schell Games) – Lexica, an ELA Game World focused on getting students to read more. Mukashi Mukashi, a syntax and story-telling game based on Japanese folklore.

• Phil Stuart (Preloaded) – Storycards, a collectible card game featuring authors and characters from classic and modern literature. TyrAnt, a real-time strategy game of competing ant colonies.

• Britt Meyers & Eli Weissman (High Line Games) – Education version ofW.E.L.D.E.R. (top selling iOS spelling game).

• Ira Fay (Fay Games) – Tomes, a choose-your-own-adventure series featuring characters (and vocabulary) from classic literature.

• Zach Barth (Zachtronics) – Metaboism, a pinball-style game about how plants and people get energy. Habitactics, a puzzle ecosystem game.

• John Krajewski (Strange Loop) – SimCell, a game which enables sustained exploration of a human muscle cell.

 I've written anywhere from little tiny bits of some of these games to the entirety of others. Feel free to guess which are which. Not that I'll be able to tell you, but I want to know what you're thinking.

Spoiler Alerts

Three big things which I should tell you about:

First, my new book My First Kafka was officially sent to the printers! That's still a long and complicated process which will take several months. But what it means is, I'm officially off the hook. I'll put up the cover next week (although if you're really curious, you can probably find it posted somewhere). You can also officially preorder it on IndieBound, B&N, and Amazon. If you do, let me know -- I'll sign it when I get a chance. And thank you.



Second: The top-secret project I've been working on has been announced. On the front page of the New York Times, no less. That's about all I can say about that, but go here to read everything you could possibly want (and then Google around for even more).

And third, my colleague, good friend, and occasional couchsurfing host Rob Auten's own game, Gears of War Judgment, is coming out next week! He's been doing a ton of press, but I think this is probably the best interview I've seen. It's also really illuminating in regard to all the stuff I'm still not allowed to say.

Forget reality. I've got my new glasses.

So this weekend was IndieCade East, a video game convention for independent game-makers, and in line with my new job I got to go. Most of it was really wonderful, playing other people's games and stepping into their minds for a few minutes.

Tons of stuff I could tell you about if I remembered all the links, but the one that stands out right now is Gorogoa, a sort of puzzle game with amazing drawing work. You fit the pictures together and then they grow out of each other, and explaining too much is probably bad, but here's what it looks like, sometimes, anyway:

And then there was virtual reality. This is what I did. Essentially it's tiny TV monitors inside a set of goggles. The screen turns in time with you, which is uncannily accurate, and the suctiony power of the goggles sort of blinds out everything else. 

It's not THAT hi-tech, in spite of the concept, but it is surprisingly effective. I was shaking as I walked away, forgetting that in reality there were no climbing spires or castles. (Not in Queens, anyway.) Twelve-year-old me would be so pleased. So pleased and so jealous:

This Non-Profit Life

Two weeks ago, I told my boss I was leaving. This is at my day job, understand--not my job job (writing poems and books and movies), or my real job (taking care of a bunch of little kids, and doing my best to keep them from killing themselves and each other, and possibly teaching them some stuff), but rather the place where I've spent 8 hours of most days of the past four years. Ten hours, if you add in the commute.

It's kind of an incredible math: There are 24 hours to a day, one-third of which is spent at work, another one-twelfth getting there, one-third to one-quarter (6-8 hours, on average--admittedly, an optimistic average) sleeping, in preparation for the onslaught of your day. What's left should be a lot of time (another 8-10 hours, right?, if you've been keeping up with the math), but where does it all go? Praying. Cleaning. Eating. Posting dumb stuff on Facebook. Trying to write.



Far and away the biggest thing I've done with the past few years is Jewniverse--which, if you haven't been getting it, is a daily email I've been writing and designing that's better, I hope, than the title suggests: something cool and interesting and novel that you've never heard of, that's in some way Jewish. You can subscribe here--too late to catch most of mine, but good people will still be writing (I'll still be one of them, occasionally), and I've still got a month of stuff in the can. The website is not quite live yet, but in a week or two, if you go to thejewniverse.com, there'll be a ton of these things to check out.

(And then I've done a bunch of other stuff, like these videos and these articles and this blog, and omg I threw years of my life into this blog, and one day I'll separate the cool articles from the stupid video posts, but I don't know when...but it's weird, saying goodbye.)

So that's been the past two years. It's weird to say goodbye to your babies, especially since, unlike actual babies, it's not even like my old posts are going to come back from college or invite me to their weddings or put me into a nursing home or something.

But it's been good. Daniel, my editor, made a point of telling me that, over the past 2 years, I've written and sent out 4.7 million emails. Most of them have been short, under 200 words, but it's still pretty powerful and an amazing gift that I've been able to. And it's totally dumb of me to say thank you to you for reading and listening, but I'm going to say it anyway.

I'm still around. I'll still blog (hopefully more, now that I've got time!) at matthue.com, and I have a new book coming out next year! I'm moving on--starting Monday, I'll be writing video games for Wireless Generation, and I'm hugely excited, although right now I'm more nervous and anxious about it. But I'll see you around. It's a small Internet, after all, and it's only getting smaller.

Thank you.

(Yeah. That's all I meant to say.)

Thank you.

The Scavenger Hunt Novel Is Underway

I had a reading last Thursday and Electric Literature was kind enough to write it up: "Roth has a charm about him that entices you, no matter your literary proclivities." They also gave me an award for Best Writerly Facial Expressions that I didn't even know what I was up for.



I read my story "The Ambush" (which was originally titled "Bombs over Breakfast," shout-out to my fave influencers) (I think I'm only shouting-out OutKast because Rabbi Fink did last week). It's a short story, and it features Jupiter from Losers, and it's also chapter 4 of this scavenger-hunt novel that I wrote.

Um. Let me explain. Last year, I wrote this book Enemies that I really liked, and my agent sort of didn't. It was conveniently already sliced into chapters, and so I've been publishing them as short stories. This marks the 5th (I think?) piece that's been published:

1. Girl Jesus on the Inbound Train (in Truth & Dare)
2. Are You Being Served? (in Apiary) (and it's online!)
3. xxxxxx
4. The Ambush (Let me reiterate: in Cornered)
5. Jupiter Glazer Meets His Maker (in Mimaamakim)

Chapter 3 is going to be published, but it's on hiatus right now, and I probably shouldn't say where yet? But I think you'll like it.

And then there's a second half. I'll try to figure out how to get that to you guys, soon.

5:05 a.m.: The baby screams.

A day in the life.

Kid Crying Isn’t Real Crying

The morning started out good. First, I woke up at 7:30. Miracle! The kids went to bed late, and then my baby mama and I stayed up late, and I was sure I was going to be zombieied today. No such luck. I soundly ignored my vibrator-but-not-the-good-kind of an alarm clock, heard the baby singing in her cot, and jumped up to get her. Five minutes later, she was soundly clamped on a maternal boob*, the 3-year-old was clamoring awake, and I was simultaneously packing lunch, getting dressed, getting her dressed, and trying to say the morning prayers.

Our older kid is an impossible dresser. First of all, she has a new favorite color every day, and she will only wear that color. Secondly, she has of late developed an aversion to wearing anything below her waist. Also, she is militantly against eating anything until two minutes before she has to leave.

So you can imagine my surprise when she sprints straight for her clothes drawer. She hands me a shirt (weather-appropriate!) and pants (that match!), and patiently waits for me to tie her shoes. I slam down my upstairs prayerbook — I’m up to the point where I need to put on a tallis and tefilin, and that is downstairs — and yell back over my shoulder to her, “Come on! I’ll make you breakfast or you can play with your toys or whatever!” I touch ground at the first floor. Whereupon I hear her voice over my shoulder, wafting down from the second story: “CARRY ME!”

Dude.

Could you not have asked me thirty seconds ago? That’s thirty seconds, one flight of stairs climbed, that I’ll never get back.  “Don’t worry about it,” I say. “Just walk down yourself.” After all, she’s been climbing stairs for years. She’s a stairmaster.

And the mouth flies open. And the crying starts.

I don’t know if you know about kid-crying. It’s not like grownup crying (or even like teen-angst crying, which I am way more used to). It’s a combination guttural yell, swallow, choke, and burp. It’s totally tear-less, at first. In fact, behavioral scientists in my imagination have hypothesized that kid-crying is genetically related to crocodile crying, which is to say, it’s not actually sadness-related or pain-related at all, but is instead a technique specifically designed to lure in sympathetic victims until they’re in biting distance.

Actually, I think kid-crying brings on real crying if you do it long enough, thus preparing your child for a bright future as a stage actor with the rare talent to cry on command, or possibly as a manipulative future ex-girlfriend to someone exactly like yourself. Did I say that aloud? Okay, moving on.

I tell her, come on, it’s fine, I can make you breakfast if you want, and we have those new organic Puffins that actually taste good and that you love. The onslaught continues. I ignore her. My day-job beckons, after all. Not to mention G-d. So I wrap myself up in tefilin, grab my downstairs prayerbook, and start prayin’ like there’s no tomorrow.

She keeps crying.

There is a thump. A rhythmic thump upstairs, of clumsy wheels guided by clumsy feet. “What that?” my older daughter demands, and I can hear my wife explaining that the baby just got a walker.

“I want a walker too!” That sentence doesn’t actually end, per se, so much as the too fading into another wail.

And then a pause. “You got the baby a present and if you got the baby a present than you will get me a present too,” she says — and you’ll notice, of course, that there is no breath in between the crying and the talking, no wiping away of tears or swallowing of mucous that comes with real crying; it’s been crocodile yells this whole time — “What present did you get me, Mama?”

Alright, there’s no getting out of this. None of that parenting-book stuff we try to adhere to, where you try not to connect the presents with the temper tantrums, either as a reward or as a punishment. A tantrum is a tantrum, and both work and preschool are calling. In a few minutes, she will trundle down the stairs, on her own, and show me her brand-new baby hammock.

But for now, I close my eyes. I pray. Not drowning out the chaos of our morning, but becoming one more voice in the chorus of it.
_____
* — Yes, she’s still breastfeeding, although we have to supplement. Read here if you’re not yet entirely sick of the whole boob-sucking debacle.

Wish I Was Here

Pictures of a bunch of strangers mostly make me annoyed. Occasionally -- maybe it's a certain collection of facial expressions, maybe it's a waterslide in the background -- they make me jealous that I wasn't there or sad that I missed something important.

This shot from the set of The Secret Movie makes me a little of both. But it also makes me just happy that it exists in the first place (or, that it will), and that this many awesome people got to meet each other.



But, still, wishing I was there.

(but, thank you, Aleix)

Make my heart sing.

Q: What does it take to make me burst into tears at work?

A: The trailer for Where the Wild Things Are.

I could be critical. I could start second-guessing what the rest of the movie is going to be like, and whether the Wild Things will have the same voices that they did in my head as a child (they won't) or that I give them when I read out loud to my daughter (probably not). Somewhere in my head right now, I'm thinking about it from the perspective of Maurice Sendak, and whether he would have expected the film version to be anything like his book (no) and whether he would be happy anyway (I really, really believe yes).

But at this very moment in time, I don't care. I just want to run out of here and not stop till I get to the ocean.

Back to School

The Friday night show at Stony Brook was amazing -- the rabbi had a huge dinner in his house, like 50 people, and more just kept popping in and out and staying for 5 minutes. The performance itself was so cool. The last time i did a college show, I kind of talked too much about my kid, and people were like, "Uh, he's so old," but this time, the preppy kids who NEVER care about this stuff were into it, and coming up to me afterward, and people were flirting with Itta and me and so I feel pretty damn good about the performance.

And I am only being all ego-boosty because it's Monday and here I am, back at the office job, sitting at my desk and answering calls from people who think that because I have extension 1 and they can't wait for the rest of the message, that means I'm the secretary.