The Law as it Pertains to 16-Year-Olds

Nothing productive ever transpires between two 27-year-old males suffering from pangs of arrested development. For the sake of this blog, I'm somewhat forced to throw myself to the wolves and admit that I was part of the following conversation. However, I am still equipped with the option to protect my friend Jason's anonymity. In the interest of not feeding him to the wolves, I will refer to Jason as "Justin" throughout the remainder of this blog.

The following conversation is drastically paraphrased, but the gist is totally intact.

Trust me.

Justin: I was talking to a few people from work the other day. I kinda painted myself in a corner. I was trying to say that the average girl is at the peak of her physical beauty at the age of 16 or so.

Adam: You think? Not like, 21 or 25?

Justin: Some of them, sure. The older you get the more you know what makeup works for you, what clothes are most complimentary, some girls mature better than others...

Adam: (giggling) ...They're not so damn giggly.

Justin: Right. But physically speaking, the average girl is at her physical peak in high school.

Adam: Which made being a high school boy pretty damn difficult.

Justin: And for a lot of girls, we think of them as teenagers for the rest of our lives. I haven't seen Jenna Keith since 1998. I'm sure she's changed a bit in the last nine years--

Adam: --A few haircuts. Her clothes are probably different.

Justin: (pauses long enough to consider the stupidy of Adam's interruption) Right. A lot about her has probbaly changed. she looks more like a 27-year-old than an 18-year-old. But when I think of Jenna Keith, I think of Jenna Keith as an 18-year-old. So if somebody came up to me and showed me her high school picture, I would probably look at it and think, "yeah, she was pretty hot." But then, I'd be a 27-year-old guy looking at a photograph of a 17-year-old and everyone would think that I'm some sort of pervert.

Adam: Yeah, but it's an old picture. That girl's not 17 anymore.

Justin: Does that matter? If some guy gets caught tomorrow downloading child pornography that was created in the 70's, is that legal? No one would think it wierd for me to have a crush on some girl when we were both in high school, but I haven't seen her in almost 10 years, so when I think about her, I'm thinking about an 17-year-old girl.

Adam: Yeah that's weird. I wonder what would happen if you took a nudie picture of your high school crush?

Justin: Did she pose for it? Or is this a photo taken while hanging from the treetops with a telephoto lense?

Adam: (laughing, but also creeped out) No. You guys are dating or whatever. It's a consentual picture. Like "Titanic."

Justin: That was a drawing in "Titanic."

Adam: I know. I'm not speaking directly about the medium, so much as the emotional resonance throughout its creation. She's 17. She's nude and you keep the picture. Twenty years later the cops suspect you have kiddie porn, they bust down your door and find only that one picture. Can you have that picture in your possession? Is that allowed?

Justin: I dunno. Does it matter what your relationship to the person is? If you know them, can you take whatever picture you want?

Adam: I doubt it. If you could, there would be no more "dirty uncle" stereotype. But also, there's got to be some line, right? I'm pretty sure my mother has pictures of me peeing into a fountain when I was five.

Justin: Are you tastefully peeing into the fountain?

Adam: Is it possible to tastefully pee into anything? Is that what defines underage porn? How tasteful it is?

(Both pause uncomfortably while thinking about the direction the conversation is going.)

Justin: Besides two sets of parents not being happy about the nude stuff, there's nothing legally wrong with two 16-year-olds taking nude pictures of one another, right?

Adam: Until you turn 18.

Justin: Then it becomes porn? What if that girl turned out to be your wife? What if you took a nudie picture of her when she was 16, you stayed together, married, saved all your photographs and that was one of them. Is that child pornography?

Adam: Does it matter if you knew the person or still know the person.

Justin: Yeah. Like if you and I both got married--

Adam: To each other?

Justin: No. You and I get married to two seperate girls. What if on our wedding day we were both given a nude picture of our wife as a 16-year-old. But let's say I had known my wife since we were 10, but you hadn't met your wife until you were 25. Is there any difference in the photographs then?

Adam: I'm pretty sure that two 17-year-olds who are having sex have to stop once one of them turns 18, which would be the worst birthday present ever.

Justin: They have to stop until they both turn 18?

Adam: Yeah. It's like the adult swim break at public pools. Everyone's having a fun time, then the lifeguard blows the whistle and the kids have to pause the fun for fifteen minutes. Except with the law, it's much more than 15 minutes.

Justin: That's retarded.

Adam: Well okay, it's not the best analogy, but it's close.

Justin: The law is retarded, not your analogy.

Adam: You don't have nude pictures of any 16-year-olds do you? I'm asking in case the cops question me.

Justin: Not that I know of.

Book List 2007

Since last year's book list went over so well (i.e. not a single one of you mentioned that you even read it), I've decided to further fan the flames of literacy.

Instead of a year-end recap, I'll just update this list each time I complete a book. This will surely fuel the bulk of you to engage me and your peers toward somewhat frequent book discussions - or at the very least, shame you into reading more books.

C'mon. It's what Hillary Clinton would want for the entire village.

FICTION
____________________________________________________________

Joe College
by Tom Perrotta
pub. 2000

This book reads like a literary version of The River by Bruce Springsteen. And while most of you assume I'd give something like that an A, it just didn't have enough moxy or drive to break through. B



Lucky Wander Boy
by D.B. Weiss
pub. 2003

This is High Fidelity for the videogame audience. And while it has its clever moments of fanatical energy, it also suffers from a sludgy insistence upon discussing early 80s gaming technology - which is the equivalent of Nick Hornby discussing the evolution of the phonograph. C

Catch 22
by Joseph Heller
pub. 1966

I've heard so much about this book, I expected more. Like reading several O. Henry stories one after another, Heller's literary tricks get old and the humor only arrives in energetic spurts. This classic certainly isn't bad, but the author's intent is occasionally so heavy-handed and repetitive, I often had to fight the urge to flip ahead 25 pages. B-

If nothing else, Heller did construct a wonderful passage toward the book's finale that I've since used to introduce my blog entitled The Poor Die Young. The Rich Live Forever.

1929
by Frederick Turner
pub. 2003

Borrowing the grandiose brushstrokes Fitzgerald used to bring Gatsby to life, Frederick Turner weaves through a disappointingly familiar pastiche of metropolitan Americana during the Art Deco age. Following the life of fictional coronet player, "1929" suspiciously sponges off of films like "Singin' in the Rain," "Some like It Hot" and "The Untouchables." While Turner wonderfully establishes the era, it comes only at the expense of passion and drama. C+

A Thousand Splendid Suns
by Khaled Hosseini
pub. 2007

"The Kite Runner" was one of the best books I've read in years and I was both apprehensive and excited for Hosseini's follow-up novel following three generations of Afghani women, as they seek shelter from the tyrannical storm of war and inequality. Explaining the specific plot points of "A Thousand Splendid Suns" would be a great injustice to the manner in which those plot points are revealed and illustrated. Hosseini summons strength and heartbreak in a mere whisper. While this book is less surprising than "The Kite Runner," it is certainly an admirable follow-up. A

The Tender Bar
by J.R. Moehringer
pub. 2005

No, I've never befriended a group of burlesque men in a dusty tavern and my bookstore experience was less tender than the author's, and of course, I've never attended Yale, but for all the dissimilarities there are between the letter of Moehringer's memoirs and my own life, there are a striking amount of similarities found in the spirits of both. Rarely do I feel the kinship with an author that I felt reading this book. Not only did it entertain me, it reflected parts of my personality that I've never truly studied before. I will not recommend a book any higher this year than "The Tender Bar." A+


NONFICTION
___________________________________________________________


Freakonomics: A Rogue Economist Explores the Hidden Side of Everything
by Steven D. Levitt and Stephen J. Dubner
pub. 2005

At some point, "thinking outside the box" is going to become commonplace. But because it hasn't yet, books like these always have a welcomed spot on my shelf. My only complaint is that the book feels unfinished. Mostly because, as Levitt admits, it is largely unfinished. He could write 30 volumes of this book and there would remain more to say. how stagnant we've stayed in the 10 years since this book was written. A-


We the Media: A Citizen's Guide to Fighting for a Media Democracy
edited by Don Hazen and Julie Winokur
pub. 1997

This propagandistic patchwork of articles taken from countless (vastly leftist) publications, does a fair job of introducing, informing and identifying the world of media control, bias and ownership. While the political cartoons make for an embarrassing read on the train, it's more embarrassing how stagnant we've stayed in the 10 years since this book was written. B-


News & Numbers: A Guide to Reporting Statistical Claims and Controversy in Health and Other Fields by Victor Cohn and Lewis Cope
pub. 2001

Do you like statistics? Do you enjoy applying statistics to uncover greater truths kept hidden by a nation of spin doctors, PR members and biased lobbyists? Yeah, well it doesn't matter, 'cause this book is an underwritten, overlong, exercise in exploring common sense journalistic techniques and mathematical writing guidelines. F

Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business
by Neil Postman
pub. 1985

A clever, albeit overly-written, manifesto on the growing spell television caste on the nation midway through the Reagan era. Part philosophical waxation on the nation's influence on televised programming, the book's truly intriguing portions come when Postman ruminates on television's influence on the nation. Believe it or not, 22 years after its publication, much of this book remains pertinent. B

Media/Society : Industries, Images, and Audiences (3rd Ed.)
David Croteau & William Hoynes
pub. 19??

Aside from the creepy baby on the cover haunting me throughout the semester, there are few other detracable aspects of this text. It is probably the most comprehensive and complete (albeit somewhat outdated) work to focus on the media's stranglehold on our society, while illustrating a reciprocative understanding of the specifics that allowed and continue to allow such a stranglehold to take place. A-


Uncivil Wars: The Controversy Over Reparations For Slavery
David Horowitz
pub. 2002

I didn't even intend to read this book, I intended to order a different "Uncivil Wars" on Amazon.com, but got this. And since I'll be damned if I waste my money, I gave this book a go-round. Reparations hasn't been a hot-button topic for half-a-decade, and Horowitz strikes me as the type of man who gets into shouting matches about his favorite food, song or color, but the book certainly makes its case and warrants some consideration, even if it's a few years too late. B

Reporting on Risk: Getting it Right in an Age of Risk
by Victor Cohn
pub. 1990

When I look back on this literary year I will almost assuredly view it as the year I continuously read oddly out-of-date non-fiction. Nevertheless, this oddly out-of-date non-fiction was helpful during my tenure at the hospital as well as distinguishing what, in the media, is important versus what is claimed to be. B-


The Glass Castle
by Jeannette Walls
pub. 2005

Although most people think their family is crazy, the growing trend in bestselling memoirs is to out-crazy the last author. Just as Augusten Burroughs finished fighting off rumors that his cracked-mirror of a childhood was greatly exaggerated, MSNBC gossiper, Jeannette Walls thrusts her dirty laundry into the limelight for all to see. The difference between this memoir and several over-the-top familial recounts is that Jeanette turned out fairly balanced and wrote this story, not from a place of embittered revenge, but of surprising awe, shame and and occasional revelry. A

The Truth About the Drug Companies: How They Deceive Us and What To Do About It
by Marcia Angell, M.D.
pub. 2004

After having seen Michael Moore's documentary, "Sicko," I was hungry to investigate the health care industry further. I read this book based on a recommendation from my dad. Turns out that most of the drug companies are crooked as question marks and this award-winning book explains how they've remained this way. Drug companies produce very few innovative drugs, opting instead to repackage already available pills. They've purchased the FDA, the agency created to monitor the drug companies; they influence clinical research on their own products and exploit patent and marketing loopholes. While this book will not enamor, it will enlighten. A-

Peeling the Onion

There are things you just can't do in life. You can't beat the phone company, you can't make a waiter see you until he's ready to see you, and you can't go home again.
Bill Bryson, American Author

We shape our dwellings, and afterwards our dwellings shape us.
Winston Churchill, British Statesman, Prime Minister

I don’t really recall ever being knee-deep in anything. It seems like when buried deep in something, whatever the substance in which one is buried, harmlessly abates at the ankle or wells up past the shoulders. My recollection of past burials seems only to recall events in an all-or-nothin' manner. When trouncing out into oceans and lakes, I suppose there must have been a point shortly after the water level was shin-deep that I became knee-deep in the water. It is also entirely possible that before the water reached my knees, I dove under and began swimming.

Standing in the basement of the house of which my parents relocated seven years ago, I finally find myself steeped deeper than my ankles. Lately, I've been knee-deep in my past.

My folks are selling the house and moving into smaller environs. My sister leaves for college in fewer days than fingers on which to count them off and I’m a 27-year-old man living in the equivalent of his college dorm room.

In many ways, it’s time for us all to go.

My parents sold the house for nearly their asking price, an unheard of accomplishment considering the market. What they were able to maintain however in their original asking price, they were forced to compromise in time and comfort throughout the moving process.

From the date we sold the house, we were all given less than a month to pack up and leave. Currently, we have 18 days to scoop up and out. A clean 'n' jerk of our home.

Having planned to leave the familial nest (again) for the past 11 months, it would be inaccurate to claim that moving out is shocking my system. The theory of leaving is far different from the practice however, and wallowing both figuratively and literally in the remnants of my past is more difficult than I would have guessed.

At some point in every man’s life, he is expected to prioritize that which he has accumulated over time. The alternative to this would be to save everything, no matter how inconsequential, and become a hermit, living amongst baseball cards, broken toys and uncountable artifacts from past vacations.

I’ve kept these things (and more) because I felt without them I would have no way to account for my past. My blunt memory will only become duller with time. If I have proof of the way my world used to be, perhaps I would find meaning in it all. Each dusty copy of “Entertainment Weekly”, ripped comic book and videotaped Letterman interview is something that I imagined I would drag out and show someone someday. Why they would care about “Mad Magazine” or my sketchbook from 1994 was never a detail of which to concern myself. I was sure I would need to account for my past and so throwing it away was unthinkable.

But I’m knee deep in crap that hasn’t affected my life in years, perhaps decades and it’s time to say goodbye.

I’ve been told that home is where the heart is. I can’t recall who told me this, but it wasn’t Pliny the Elder, the Roman neophatonist credited with originating the adage, so I'll just assume I heard it on an episode of "The Dukes of Hazzard". Lately, I’ve thought a lot about this quote. My family is leaving the place I would classify as housing my heart. Perhaps Pliny meant for his message to signify overarching geographical locations. Instead of my house, perhaps the Elder would prefer for me to consider Illinois my home. I’d rather live in Chicago than Ontario, but I’d rather live in Ontario than DeKalb, so relegating the quotation to large pieces of earth doesn’t make sense.

So if we’re packing up and leaving the place in which my heart rests, should I assume that for a little while, I will be homeless?

With each box I haul out to the trash, I feel as if one less layer remains wrapped around my onion. The outside layers are faded, brittle and easily removed. With each layer sloughed off, a slightly more stinging, golden vegetable awaits underneath, until the onion appears wholly different from its original form.

And I guess that’s what remains scariest of all: favoring the acrid winds of change over the mild heft of familial comfort. I always assumed I’d move out of this house. I assumed I’d pack up my things into boxes and store them in a different basement or hang it all on different walls. But I also never quite imagined that there would be no place to run once I became disenchanted by those walls or that basement. I’m desperate to hang onto the sloughed off layers, uninterested for now, in the onion’s core.

If layers can be stripped and houses sold; memories faded and tossed into anonymous heaps, what remains? And where does it go?

If home is where the heart is, and I can’t go home again (as Bryson says in the opening of this blog) where am I?

What’s left after the rest of me is scattered into numerous anonymous heaps?

Please Adam Don't Hurt 'Em

By the summer of 1989, both MC Hammer and Vanilla Ice were among the two biggest names in music. And while it embarrasses me to admit it, I was one of their biggest fans. I saw a lot of myself in these guys. Hammer was self conscious about his skinny legs and compensated for them by wearing parachute pants and so did I. Vanilla Ice was a white guy with rhythm and I was a white guy with rhythm. Really, it was a fandom arranged by destiny.

Also during this time, I had a friend named Tom. No one called him Tom, they called him Spike. Even our teachers called him Spike. As far as I know, this nickname was created from thin air; created because it was cool.

Tom and I had a pleasant relationship, but we were never the friends we could have been because his nickname would always come between us. Tom’s awesome nickname was the stick in the bicycle spokes of our companionship. I wanted to be cool, but every time my 94-year-old 5th grade teacher called Tom Spike, it reminded me that I was not cool. It hurt. It hurt like a dagger to my heart… a spike, if you will. I wanted to be Spike, but clearly, Spike was already taken. Being only nine-years-old at the time, I wasn’t very creative and for several months, it never occurred to me that other nicknames besides Spike might be cool too.

I remember the morning it dawned on me to marry my desire for a nickname with the admiration I had for Hammer and Ice.* Like Spike, I wanted a nickname that was rugged and dangerous. I wanted to be called something mean and scary. I settled on “Chainsaw” and set out to convince my mom that this was to be my new identity.

The exact reaction my mother gave me is unclear to me all these years later, but I think it involved a fair amount of laughing on her part and more than a few more alternate nicknames that she felt were more suitable; names like SillyBilly, Baby-Boy and Bonzo.

I remember thinking that I hadn’t made my desire for coolness clear to my mother because the nicknames she was suggesting were all wrong. People feared spikes. Spikes hurt; you could fall on one, or get speared by one in the shadows of the night or something. No one was going to fear a Baby-Boy or whatever a Bonzo was. I decided that to make my intent clearer, I would announce my intention to shave the word Chainsaw (capital “C”) into the back of my hair.

When MC Hammer’s penultimate album “Please Hammer, Don’t Hurt ‘Em” was released, my mother would specifically request that we listen to that cassette. I was always obliging, because I too enjoyed hammer-dancing down my hallway. It always seemed odd however, that Mom would set aside her Joni Mitchell and Janis Joplin. Surely, I thought, my Mom had felt the thunder that was “U Can’t Touch This” and therefore, my assumptions lead me to believe by articulating that a nickname was something that needed to be accomplished if I were going to be happy. Vanilla Ice shaved his name into the rear of his casaba and look how happy he was?

He was to the extreme and rocked the mic like a vandal. Something grabbed ahold of him tightly and it flowed like a harpoon both daily and nightly.

How could my mother argue with that? I wasn’t asking for a tattoo of my nickname, just an awesome, awesome haircut that would separate me from the children. Heck, I wasn’t even asking for parachute pants.**

I pictured the first day of school with my new haircut. While most of my classmates would have a new bookbag or a nice shirt; I’d walk in with a swagger and sway and an announcement to the world that Adam was still playing in the summer sandbox of his youth. The man standing before you was Chainsaw! My thoughts after this point remain fuzzy. I think I broke into a spot-on Hammer dance. I’m sure the 9-year-old me would have found this a perfect time to break into a Hammer dance.

I never got a chance to break into my Hammer dance because neither my nickname nor my haircut ever came to fruition. *** I remained the mopped-toppy Adam; boring old Adam. People bowed to Spike; gave him their Hostess Twinkies at lunch; let him swing on the good swing at recess. But me? I was just the friend of awesome Spike.

I often wonder how my life would appear now, had my mom allowed me to buzz the word chainsaw into the back of my cranium. I spent a long time assuming my mom had made the right decision. After all, Hammer is bankrupt and Vanilla was almost thrown out of a hotel window by Shug Knight. I had made my peace with the entire ordeal until I found out Spike had become a real estate salesman in Malibu and could probably buy and sell me thrice over. His two tow-headed sons have already been drafted by the Los Angeles Dodgers, despite only being six-years-old and he married the lovely Jenna von Oy (from television’s “Blossom”) or some other girl I had a crush on when I was that age.

I would risk getting thrown out of a hotel window for Blossom’s spunky chum, Six. I shoulda continued pushing for Chainsaw.

======================================

* You know what? Hammer and Ice would have made a pair of pretty good nicknames too or maybe just Icehammer.

** Several months later, I asked for parachute pants.

*** I didn’t want anything as passionately as my Chainsaw haircut until the spring of 1991 when I begged my parents for a pair of overalls. When I got them, I wore them with only one strap attached, while the other strap swung stupidly behind me. I believe I wore that style throughout the summer and into the fall wherein, I traded my overalls in for an Ace of Base CD and a couple slap bracelets.