Apparently it’s Neurodiversity Celebration Week. So in the interests of making mental quirks more visible and less taboo, I’ll share that I’ve got Tourette Syndrome!¹ Let’s learn some more about it, shall we?

Tourette Syndrome isn’t as rare as you think. It’s entirely possible you’ve had it your entire life without realizing, as I did until my late 30s, when I described my behavior to a therapist and she suggested it. “Huh,” I thought, “I guess having the exact symptoms of a thing COULD mean that I have the thing.” It was so baked into my inner life that I’d never even considered it!

Definitionally, Tourette’s involves multiple physical tics and—most famously—at least one involuntary verbal tic. You’re certainly thinking of curse words right now, as it lives in the popular imagination: who doesn’t love a random “FUCK!” screamed out at grandma’s funeral? But that turns out to be a separate phenomenon called coprolalia, which is only loosely associated with Tourette’s. The verbal tic can be anything at all, which is where it gets fun.

My tics aren’t unprompted; rather, they’re bound almost completely to intrusive thoughts of embarrassing memories.² At a young age I coined the clumsy phrase “embarrassment flashback” to describe the stab of regret I feel when recalling such a moment in my past—no matter how old or minor, no matter how certain that I’m the only person on earth who remembers it—and immediately feeling as embarrassed, or more so, than I did at the time. This happens to me frequently, between 1–10 times per day. Yes, it’s a curse.

I know some of you share this curse; I’ve discussed it with various friends over time. But you probably don’t have a spontaneous physical reaction to the painful memory. And the reaction probably isn’t a compulsion to blurt something out loud, which is where my Tourette’s enters the chat.

What I’ll say in the moment is mostly unpredictable, though my brain does pull from a sort of phrasebook. Imagine pulling the Buzz Lightyear cord on my back and getting something that ranges from understandable (“Fuck!”) to absolutely bonkers (“I’m a monkey!”). Just to reiterate: I do NOT do this intentionally! My brain has a mind of its own.

As you can tell from the F-bomb above, I’m in that Tourette’s minority who experiences coprolalia. The good news is I can mostly control my tics. I repress them 99% of the time while in social company, so my secret is generally well-kept. But when I’m alone at the house, I might practically yell it, like I’m using it to purge the embarrassment from my body.

I’m noticing my defenses weaken as I age. Just the other night, my improv class was in the middle of a scene when it reminded me of something—I honestly don’t remember what!—and muttered “Fuck” loud enough that they might have heard me. I’m not sure if this will continue to worsen to the point that I’m blurting things out mid-conversation, but Kiki’s so used to it by now that this exchange is now common around the house:

“Fuck!”

“What?”

“Tourette’s.”

“Okay!”

Since the intrusive thoughts are the root cause of the tics, I’ve developed a few defense mechanisms against them over time—yes, that’s my brain doing battle against my brain. Life is weird. My most recent defense is an imaginary ravioli, akin to Egon’s Twinkie. (Why a ravioli, you ask? Why any of this!!!, I reply.) When an embarrassment bubbles up in my mind, momentarily blinding me from anything else, I imagine shoving it into the ravioli like you’d shove a tissue back in the box. Instead of muttering “I’m a monkey” to myself, I might mutter “White ravioli.” It’s utter nonsense, but it helps.

So there’s a fun fact about my atypical brain (I’ve also got ADHD, but hell, who doesn’t?). If I ever say something completely nonsensical in your presence, that could be why. I know it’s weird, but I know from experience, being weird is a lot cooler.

About one million years ago, a glacier punched its way through the Wicklow Mountains south of Dublin, leaving behind a long, curved valley and two small lakes to remember it by.

Then about 1,500 years ago, a guy called Cóemgen settled in that same valley—by then unimaginatively named the “Glen of Two Lakes,” or Gleann Dá Loch—so he could live out a cloistered monastic life. Virtually nothing has survived about Cóemgen except for fantastical, sometimes amusing, legends. In one, he dropped a book in the lake only for a friendly otter to return it; in another, he rolled around in nettles to quell his carnal passions for a lovely maiden and encouraged her to do the same. (Girl, run.)

Cóemgen’s desire for hermitage backfired spectacularly, since he gained followers and fame, and well, here we are talking about him. By the 10th century the valley featured an entire “monastic city,” today a set of scattered ruins punctuated by a 30-meter stone tower. After the English showed up with their extremely weird language, Gleann Dá Loch became “Glendalough,” and Cóemgen became “Kevin.” That’s right: on the longest possible timeline, I’m this guy’s namesake.

That’s all a mildly interesting history lesson, but Saint Kevin was completely incidental as to how Kiki and I found ourselves getting married in his old stomping grounds, of all places, last week. Despite our love of the stage, neither of us was in the mood for a big wedding; instead, Kiki had the lovely idea that we should elope with our two sisters, hers and mine. Ireland was a logical choice, since my brother-in-law Stephen is Irish¹. When I floated the idea to Margaret she immediately recommended Glendalough, where her good friend Susanne owns a retreat venue called Glendalough Sanctuary. So the parts of the wedding fell into place like magical Lego bricks. 

Continue reading The Saints, The Snails, The Swallows, and The Sheep →

DISCLAIMER: The last thing the world needs is a white man in his 40s opining about Taylor Swift. For the record, this is just a glorified diary entry.

Back in college circa 1999, I was lucky enough to see Weird Al Yankovic in concert. I generally remember having a great time, but all these years later, I have only one specific memory of that show: the first ten seconds, when Weird Al himself ran onstage and started singing “Gump,” and in an instant, the goofy celebrity figure who only existed abstractly in my head became an actual three-dimensional human being. I laughed out loud, simply flabbergasted that this guy was real.

I thought about that moment a lot in the weeks leading up to seeing Taylor Swift in Amsterdam with Kiki and the nieces. Taylor’s become such a pop-culture force of nature that it’s functionally impossible not to have an opinion about her.¹ So it seems bizarre that—with a little bit of luck and a whole lot of money—it’s possible to just walk into a place and see her.² When she finally appeared Thursday night, over a year after we bought the tickets, emerging center-stage from enormous petals like a pop-idol flower, my first thought was: Look how small she is!

Continue reading Paramore Was Great Too →

CDK Company is a dance troupe based in The Netherlands (website), and they recently released an extremely energetic dance video to Gotye’s ubiquitous “Somebody That I Used to Know.” The scale of the production is striking, as are the Wes Anderson aesthetics. But the real eye-grabber is the choreography, a sharp, baroque contrast to the plink-plink-plink simplicity of the song.

I don’t even know if I like it! The dance moves are so rapid-fire, so herky-jerky, that it’s hard for my eye to settle (which was their intention). But the physical talent and technical precision involved are undeniable. Plus they’re Dutch! So I watched it twice just the same.

As plans solidify for the all-but-inevitable expansion of I-35 through central Austin, KUT has shared a truly impressive deep dive into TxDOT’s plans. Since the write-up is well over 5,000 words, I thought I’d do a write-up of the write-up and summarize the good, bad, and ugly. TLDR: It’s about 20% good, 60% bad, and 20% ugly.

Let’s start with their physics-defying intention to add four more lanes, which—it is almost universally understood¹—will leave traffic worse than it started. Add to that the decade of construction, and it’s hard to argue the widening provides any benefit (though of course many will argue it just the same; meet me in the comments).

Continue reading I’ll Miss the Brontosaurus Bridge, Though →

When you live in Europe, you often wake up to the news. I’ll never forget Kiki startling me awake one morning with “Will Smith slapped Chris Rock!” Of course, sometimes the news is bad—occasionally very bad. So it was to wake up to texts from Brad and Lampe telling me Cortney DeAngelo had suddenly, shockingly passed away in her sleep.

When I told my friend Rahel that an Austin improv friend had died, she asked “Were you two close?” I started to type three different responses:

Continue reading Cortney →

Today’s the five-year anniversary of one of my most secretly amazing nights, and I figure that’s a good enough excuse to end the secret. I think I’ve told this story to fewer than twenty people, which for me is a VERY low number.

So I’d come into possession of a “gift certificate” offering two free nights in a decent Vegas hotel in exchange for sitting through a timeshare sales pitch. Timeshares are a scam, but the free hotel stay felt like scamming the scammers. I booked it in February 2019 and invited my friend Yichao to make the drive from LA and spend a guys’ weekend together. 

Yichao picked me up at the airport and we made the most of Vegas for 48 hours (the correct duration for any Vegas trip; no more, no less). We wandered the Strip, went to Drag Brunch, got confused by slot machines, and ate an alarming number of calories. (Did you know there’s a $100 all-you-can-eat buffet? Now you do.) Oh yes, and I dutifully sat through the two-hour timeshare sales pitch and repeatedly told the guy that I was not his target market before finally being released.

Continue reading Maybe I Should Get That Timeshare →