Big Ten Heist Team Power Rankings

A few weeks ago, I came across the following tweet while reading Grantland's weekly college football roundup:


@DangerGuerrero: Michigan has players named Fitzgerald Toussaint and Blake Countess. They're one DB named Rene Le Serge away from having a crew for a heist.

This witty observation, coupled with my hatred for all things Michigan, got me thinking: Are all college football teams as chock full o' heist-worthy player names as UM is? What about just the Big Ten? I started doing some research, and found a glorious treasure chest of dudes who, based purely on name value, I would follow into an Ocean's 11-style heist without a moment's hesitation. Without further ado, I present your 2013 Big Ten conference All-Heist power rankings.

1. ILLINOIS FIGHTIN' ILLINI

Heist Crew: Man Berg (QB), Fritz Rock (WR), Devin Church (RB), Zane Petty (DB), Nick North (DB)
Honorable Mentions: DeJazz Woods (DL), Houston Bates (DL)
Left at Home: Pat Flavin (OL), Wes Lunt (QB)

Top to bottom, Illinois' roster screams "Heist-worthy". I would pay good money to see a movie about suave criminals starring Jason Statham as "Devin Church" and Dolph Lundgren as "Man Berg". Very few weak spots here. If only their football team could pull off the smooth moves I mentally attribute to their handsome hypothetical counterparts.

2. IOWA HAWKEYES

Heist Crew: Solomon Warfield (DB), Nico Law (DB), Andrew Stone (WR), Boone Myers (OL), Jordan Cotton (WR).
Honorable Mention: Brett van Sloten (OL)
Left at Home: Greg Mabin (DB), Peter Pekar (TE), George Kittle (WR)

If "Solomon Warfield" isn't the name of Terry Crews' next action movie character, I might quit on movies altogether. "Boone Myers" evokes visions of Burt Reynolds, hamming it up as a wily old southern ex-con. "Nico Law" was the role that late-80's Jean-Claude van Damme was destined to play. Another roster full of middling football players blessed with fantastic names. On the other side of the coin, from here on out everyone named Greg is getting left behind. Can't be bringing a Greg with you when you're stealing millions of dollars/jewels/hearts.

3. NORTHWESTERN WILDCATS

Heist Crew: Kain Colter (QB), Dwight White (CB), Christian Salem (QB), Pierre Youngblood (WR), Chance Carter (DL)
Honorable Mentions: Joe Cannon (CB), Brad North (OL), Xavier Menifield ()
Left at Home: Pat Hickey (LS), Chi Chi Ariguzo (LB), Mike Trumpy (RB)

Idris Elba, Robert Downey Jr., and Matthew McConaughey star as "Dwight White", "Kain Colter", and "Chance Carter" in 2013's "WILDCATS: THE MOVIE". The cast would need to be rounded out by a team of suave, preferably foreign-born individuals (Omar Sy as "Pierre Youngblood"?). I once heard Kain Colter referred to as a "Swiss Army Knife" on the field, as he can pass, run, and catch, so his character would have to be a consummate jack-of-all-trades. Chi Chi Ariguzo gets left home for obvious reasons (namely, that name brings to mind Tracy Morgan's character in the 2005 remake of 'The Longest Yard').

4. NEBRASKA CORNHUSKERS

Heist Crew: Vincent Valentine (DT), Chongo Kondolo (OL), King Frazier (RB), Logan Rath (DL), Boaz Joseph (CB)
Honorable Mentions: DJ Singleton (DB), Givens Price (OL), Zaire Anderson (LB)
Left at Home: Thad Randle (DT), Jay Guy (DT), Ron Kellogg III (QB)

Quentin Tarantino would need to direct Nebraska's heist film, as "Vincent Valentine" sounds like the kind of steely, remorseless criminal that QT would create to drive his next sociopathically awesome splatter-fest. Samuel L. Jackson would be the obvious choice to play "King Frazier", the no-nonsense shit-talking wild card hired gun. Djimon Hounsou as "Chongo Kondolo" is a perfect fit. This heist wouldn't be the stealthy quiet kind. With this crew, smash-and-grab shoot-em-up tactics are the only way to go.

5. MICHIGAN STATE SPARTANS

Heist Crew: Taiwan Jones (LB), Blake Treadwell (G), Dan France (OL), Leland Ewing (LS), Damon Knox (DL)
Honorable Mentions: Kodi Kieler (C)
Left at Home: Denzel Drone (DE), Mike Sadler (P)

Hugh Jackman IS "Leland Ewing" in Bryan Singer's 2013 film "SPARTANS", a chromed-out fast-paced hacker movie (that includes at least 3 heavy-handed metaphors about gay acceptance). Matt Damon helps carry the team as "Dan France", a career criminal who struggles with the ethics of his profession in light of the recent birth of his daughter. Breaking from cliched heist movie norms, "Taiwan Jones" is black rather than Asian.

6. OHIO STATE BUCKEYES

Heist Crew: Ezekiel Elliot (RB), Kato Mitchell (WR), Ben St. John (OL), Cardale Jones (QB), Vonn Bell (DB)
Honorable Mentions: Warren Ball (RB), Philly Brown (WR)
Left at Home: Eli Apple (CB), Chris Rock (DL), Kenny Guiton (QB)

Spike Lee directs this ultimately heartwarming tale of five friends who rise from the mean streets of Cleveland to become rich, successful criminals. These modern-day Robin Hoods take down soulless corporate interests in order to give back to the struggling community that birthed them, dishing out street justice to pimps and drug dealers along the way. Will Smith and Wesley Snipes star. This movie, nay, film, wins several Academy Awards.

7. MICHIGAN WOLVERINES

Heist crew: Blake Countess (CB), Fitzgerald Toussaint (RB), Justice Hayes (WR), Taco Charlton (DE), Jack Doyle (LB)
Honorable Mention: Richard Ash (DT)
Left at Home: Jake Butt (TE) (LOL), Jack Wangler (WR) (ROFL), Henry Poggi (DT) (LMAO)

Let's be honest, those top three names are awesome, and Michigan's team was the inspiration for this post. But I'm a huge homer and there's no way I'm putting UM ahead of tOSU in any ranking except "sucking". Plus the squad gets dragged down by potentially the most awful bottom three names in the league. This movie would be a middling, semi-entertaining crime story with an entirely European cast. A doing-this-for-the-paycheck Colin Farrell stars as team leader "Jack Doyle".

8. PURDUE BOILERMAKERS

Heist Crew: DeAngelo Yancey (WR), Jack De Boef (OT), Andy Garcia (LB), Danny Ezechukwu (LB), Armstead Williams (LB)
Honorable Mentions: Ruben Ibarra (LB), Cameron Posey (WR), Sterling Carter (WR)
Left at Home: Greg Latta (DE), Shane Mikesky (WR), Austin Appleby (QB)

Andy Garcia, himself an "Ocean's" movie alum, takes on the role of a lifetime as "Andy Garcia", the leader of an international heist crew boasting smooth criminals from Mexico (himself), the Netherlands (Jack De Boef), Ghana (Danny Ezechukwu), America (Armstead Williams), and England (DeAngelo Yancey). They call themselves "The Boilermakers", a reference to their first clandestine operation as a team. It involved a train heist, and it was awesome. Savvy readers will note that the "Greg Rule" has again been applied here.

9. WISCONSIN BADGERS

Heist Crew: Jazz Peavy (WR), Reggie Love (WR), Jack Russell (K), Darius Hillary (CB), Walker Williams (OL)
Honorable Mentions: Dezmen Southward (S), Jesse Hayes (LB), Robert Wheelwright (WR)
Left at Home: Jeff Duckworth (WR)

An ancient treasure. A fearsome mountain. A hostile tribe protecting their birthright. A man struggling to live up to his family's legacy. Christoper Nolan's "THE BADGERS" tells the story of Darius Hillary, great-grandson of legendary Everest climber Edmund Hillary, and his crew. So named for their striped, furry attire, The Badgers are an experienced team of mountaineers and thieves trying to find their place in the world. Each man is haunted by his own demons, none more so than Hillary, who must make his way to the unknown faces of Everest and find the "treasure hidden within", or die trying. But does his checkered past put the rest of the team at risk? Leo DiCaprio stars.

10. MINNESOTA GOLDEN GOPHERS

Heist Crew: Maxx Williams (TE), Brock Vereen (DB), De'Niro Laster (LB), Martez Shabazz (DB), Gabe Mezzenga (TE)
Honorable Mention: n/a
Left at Home: David Cobb (RB), Tommy Olson (OL)

Affectionately known in the criminal underworld as "Team Scrabble" (based on how many points they would each get for their names, on average), the squad calling themselves The Golden Gophers have big shoes to fill. Each is the son or younger brother of a rich, respected, career criminal; each has serious shortcomings in his criminal toolkit. Can this ultimately lovable, scrappy band of misfits pull together to earn some serious cash, and find themselves along the way? Watch 2013's "GOLDEN GOPHERS" and find out. The Rock stars as "Maxx Williams".

11. INDIANA HOOSIERS

Heist Crew: Nate Boudreau (QB), Danny Friend (TE), Nick Stoner (WR)
Honorable Mention: n/a
Left at Home: Chase Hoobler (LB), Steven Funderburk (LB), Dan Feeney (OL)

Spolier alert: This low-budget Cajun-weed-chic movie will not do well at the box office (or on the football field). Gary Busey 'stars' as "Danny Friend", a Hawaiian shirt-wearing loose cannon trying to make one last big score on the streets of New Orleans. Because Taylor Kitsch has never been in a good movie ever, he plays the role of "Nate Boudreau".

12. PENN STATE NITTANY LIONS

Heist Crew: DJ Crook (QB), Jesse James (TE), Jack Seymour (QB), Christian Hackenberg (QB)
Honorable Mention: Chip Chiapalle (RB)
Left at Home: Gregg Garrity (WR), Garry Gilliam (OT), Gary Wooten (LB), Wendy Laurent (C), Alex Butterworth (P)

Sanctions against the production company prevent this movie from ever being made. The Greg(g) Rule applies to this Nittany Lions squad, which also somehow fields two guys named Gar(r)y on the same 53-man roster. Pretty mind-boggling stuff. They also have a guy named Wendy, and the man who would be their heist crew's leader has a name that sounds like a moniker that a 13-year-old might self-apply. Last place is the obvious spot for PSU here.

An Open Letter to ESPN

To whom it may concern,

As a lifelong sports fan, ESPN has been a staple of my daily routine for as long as I can remember. For many, many years, your network provided excellent and unparalleled sports coverage, particularly during episodes of "SportsCenter". This "flagship" program was an hour packed with highlights, insights, witticisms, and analysis. If a viewer craved exposes, emotional stories, or discussion of the personal lives of athletes, "Outside the Lines" (often following "SportsCenter") provided a perfect medium to explore this side of the sporting world. This sort of investigative reporting provided a perfect complement to the action-packed, diverse hour that was "SportsCenter". Except in the smallest of markets, a viewer was practically guaranteed at least a few highlights of his favorite team taking the field/ice/court if they had played that night. It's what made the show so great: a broad appeal, brimming with highlights that were enriched by the commentary behind them. 

I wish I could still talk about "SportsCenter" like this in the present tense. For several years now, however, the quality of this program has been steadily deteriorating to the point that I no longer recognize it as the bastion of sports videojournalism that it once was. I think I can pinpoint the first time I noticed the show beginning to fall off. It was the summer of 2008, and a swimmer named Michael Phelps was taking the Beijing Olympics by storm. It was undoubtedly a feel-good story, one that we could all get behind as Americans. His chase for eight gold medals was a series of inspiring televised moments that many of us will likely never forget. The only dark side to his success was the fact that sports programming began to feel oversaturated with coverage of the man. My friends and I jokingly started referring to ESPN as "PhelpsCenter", due to the unyielding focus on this Olympic hero. Interviews with people only tangentially related to the situation, and to the man, began to permeate your programming. The reporting on Phelps started to take on the breathless, hero-worshipping air of freshman girls who have been smiled at by the varsity football captain in the hallway. ("He's so funny!" "OMG his workouts are in-sane!" "He eats 12,000 calories a day and is still so ripped?? Ughhhh I must be dreaming!")

The Olympics ended, and eventually the Phelps talk began to recede into the distance, but we the viewers soon found out that "SportsCenter" had developed a taste for this kind of thing. You had gained viewership by capitalizing on this type of rabid, singular focus that deconstructs every possible angle of an athlete's personal life, body language, relationships, and possible flaws.  It wasn't long after Phelps' moment in the spotlight that the specter of Brett Favre's will he-or-won't he retirement reared its ugly head. For weeks (in consecutive summers!), every morning's edition of "SportsCenter" seemed solely dedicated to scrutinizing the minutiae of Favre's life and decision-making process. Were Favre less hungry for the spotlight, he would have been justified in filing a restraining order against ESPN's own Ed Werder--the man practically camped out outside the quarterback's Mississippi home, reporting on the movements inside as well as wildly speculating about the end result of Favre's decision. We were even 'treated' to police chase-style aerial footage of Favre's black SUV taking him to and from airports as the situation played out. The man was a good quarterback, not OJ Simpson on the lam, and this coverage seemed to be ESPN's "crossing the Rubicon" moment: the die had been cast, the shark had been jumped. There was no turning back. 

Since then, "SportsCenter" has devolved into a steady rotation of flavor-of-the-month stories that are beaten into the ground by day three, and yet are not given up on until weeks or months later. Tiger Woods' imploding personal life followed Favre's indecision; LeBron James' "Decision" special came less than a year later. (Yes, yes, that hour-long debacle raised $100,000 for the Boys' and Girls' Clubs of America. It also turned the sporting press into a group of fawning yes-men waiting for a handout from a benefactor elevated to divine status.) I need not remind anyone of the biggest story to follow LeBron's "Decision" and the ensuing season, in which his first title bid in Miami fell short. An oft-criticized, poorly-mechanized quarterback was given a chance to start for my beloved Denver Broncos, and his unconventional way of winning in the face of adversity (even when the adversity was his own poor decision-making) set your network newly aflame with endless material for the talking heads. Your media circus has barely let up in the nearly two years since Timothy Richard Tebow first started a game in the NFL, through his trade to the Jets and subsequent release, and it continues to this day as he dons the practice jersey of your favorite team to hate, the New England Patriots.

(Not-so-quick sidebar: What does your network have, exactly, against the New England Patriots? As a devoted supporter of a different AFC team, I could hardly be called a Patriots fan. But I feel compelled to defend them in light of recent events--namely, the Aaron Hernandez murder trial. Your coverage has repeatedly made it seem as though members of the Patriots organization, from owner Robert Kraft to coach Bill Belichick to quarterbacks Brady and Tebow, are somehow morally culpable for Odin Lloyd's death. Hernandez's choices were his own, and by all accounts most members of the team chose to have little to do with him outside of the team facilities. Had he made threats in the locker room, or suggested in the least that he intended or was capable of such a crime, then perhaps an intervention might have been necessary, or at least possible. But to condemn an entire organization for the actions of one troubled member is not only shoddy analysis, it's blatantly unfair. I haven't heard an iota of blame being levied against the Kansas City Chiefs for linebacker Jovan Belcher's murder-suicide, and your network's collective memory seems conveniently short in the case of ESPN golden boy Ray Lewis, who escaped a murder conviction by the skin of his teeth a decade ago. I suspect that your network's chosen Belichick-as-Machiavelli storyline stems more from the fact that he refuses to play your game, to embrace the era of TMZ-style guerilla journalism, than it does from any indiscretion he has actually committed.)

As far as Aaron Hernandez is concerned, the coverage carried out by 'SportsCenter' to date has bordered on the level of absurd reached during the Brett Favre years. At one point early last week, we were treated to three consecutive days of coverage of the police searching the lake near Hernandez's home. The lack of information being stretched into four-minute "news" bits became laughably apparent when the biggest piece of information delivered was that police had found a cell phone that was entirely unrelated to the case. I don't mean to be the bearer of bad news, especially since I have no background in sports journalism, but this is hardly the kind of "news" your viewers are clamoring for. 

The most recent examples of this overexposure not named Hernandez are those of Johny Manziel and Alex Rodriguez. In the case of the former, I can only say that I am unsurprised. Not because I believe Manziel to be an out-of-control, irresponsible party boy (although recent leaks about his autograph troubles speak to some level of character issue), but because when someone is elevated to such an iconic, borderline mythical status at such a young age, they are almost guaranteed to disappoint. And regardless of how Manziel fares, ESPN will benefit. Either he salvages his reputation and repeats his record-breaking season, thereby proving the hype perpetuated by ESPN correct, or he is suspended, disgraced, and less than what he was last year, in which case your network will have months' worth of fodder with which to continue playing out the Johnny Manziel saga. Triumph or tragedy, you will capitalize, because you have established a perfectly closed feedback loop that one or two athletes a year are chosen to occupy. Oh, and in the case of A-Rod, I think most sports fans are tired of him in general. A few more concrete examples of what a self-serving, rule-bending prima donna he is will not change the emotional landscape for many. Enough. 

Perhaps I should not allow the decline of one television program to negatively impact my life so severely. In the long run, maybe it isn't so important. After all, I am only twenty-two years old--nostalgia isn't something I should be cultivating too strongly when I plan on living for quite a while longer. And yet...I feel compelled to give in to that inner tug to complain about the fact that you were once great and are no longer. I will not call it sadness; I have experienced the shattering of too many of my illusions to get sad about them anymore. But in the mold of the cliched movie dad, I will say that I am disappointed in you. Disappointed that you used to stand for things, that you caved in and sacrificed your best qualities to try to be who you thought we wanted you to be. You were wrong. Those of us out there who truly do care about sports have no time and no attention for an hour of sports news that feels like an open comedy audition mated with the worst of HLN programming. But like Nancy Grace has done on HLN, so have you allowed circus clowns like Skip Bayless and Stephen A. Smith to dominate your airtime and rhetoric. They seize their time on camera to bring out the worst aspects of discussions on race, religion, and human nature, exploiting controversial viewpoints that no rational human being could support. They employ, as was once said of President Warren G. Harding, "an army of phrases moving across the landscape in search of a meaning". And we, your customers and viewers, are tired of the whole charade.

You have gotten lazy, ESPN, as all who achieve near-monopoly status are wont to do. Why should you change? You are, after all, the "Worldwide Leader in Sports". But I contend that you still hold this title only for a lack of competition, of better options. I, for one, hope that the new Fox Sports Network lights enough of a fire under your ass to force you to uphold basic principles of journalistic integrity, and revert back to giving the people what they want: fair, broad coverage of American sports leagues that provides insightful analysis and tough reporting, instead of inflammatory baseless analysis and spineless reporting. Scandal is easy, it is cheap. It is also the mark of hacks and those with little of import to say. As a lifelong lover of sports, I can only hope and petition that you find it in the collective conscience of your network to stop coddling reporters who do not report and analysts who do not analyze, and get back to what made you once great. 

Sincerely,

Charles McKeever

K-Rockathon Is Not Decadent But It Is Certainly Depraved

The following is a harrowing, possibly exaggerated account of the writer's day as a beer server at Syracuse's "K-Rockathon".

I pulled into the State Fairgrounds at 9:40 am, the air ripe with the smell of decaying human intelligence. It took me several tries to find the VIP/Vendor parking lot, and I was briefly delayed by a gibbering drunk behind the wheel of a Toyota Tundra, screaming at his mother over the phone. His vascular neck and overall complexion made me grateful for the numerous medical tents set up inside the Fairgrounds, as his day seemed destined to end in either a vein-bursting fit of apoplectic rage or a vomit-spewing episode induced by crippling amounts of bottom-of-the-barrel $5 lager. It was eighty minutes before the gates were set to open, and already the chain link fences were groaning under the mass of jiggling black-clad flesh pressing against them in anticipation. Cries rang out left and right, an ad-libbed discordant chorus accompanied by the honking of truck horns--"Hail Satan!" "Three Days Grace Rules!" "Ooooaaa-a-a-a-ahhhhh!"

I hustled from my car (a recycled-plastic Saturn Ion adrift in a sea of pickup trucks old and new) and through the gates, exchanging a nod with the uniformed officer guarding the crosswalk as to say what we were both thinking--"Yes, these people exist." I felt like a Christian being led into the Coliseum early in the day, before the raving spectators and lions arrived. My nerves jangled all the way to Beer Booth #1, where I faced the prospect of trying to slake the unquenchable thirst of this teeming horde of flesh. As I approached the Booth, I was hailed by a passing roadie pushing two speakers on a dolly. His black shit-kicking boots, green cargo shorts, and stained brown tour T-shirt showed plainly enough that he would have been here an hour early even if he wasn't being paid to.

"K-Rockathon twenty fuckin' thirteen, am I right buddy?!"

I gave a curt nod and half a smile as I made to move past him, but this non-reply was clearly unsuitable.

"Lineup's gonna be sick, brother!"

Feeling the weight and ugliness of the day already setting in, I decided on a different tactic.

"Sure will be. Not sure the crowd's going to be to my liking, though."

"Hell, my man, you scared of a little moshing? I lost two teeth in that pit last year and I'll be right back innit again, you bet your ass."

He peeled back his upper lip to show me that he wasn't joking.

"Oh, I'm not scared of it," I said, "Just not sure I'm gonna like the shade of it. Paper said they're expecting a record turnout of blacks this year. Mexicans, too."

"Aww, you're shittin' me, brother."

"Can't say I am. I guess it's been a terrible growing summer in the south...too much rain when they only need a bit, no rain at all when they could use downpours. Never know what it's going to do from week to week. So they're all hanging in CNY for the summer hoping to get work. Berry farms, Finger Lakes wineries, that kind of thing."

"Naww! Well shit, this ain't their scene! Whoever heard'a a crowd like that comin' out to bang around to Sevendust? Or mother-friggin' Chevelle??"

"The internet is a powerful force. Bands are spreading their tour info and music videos like never before...Just last week my buddy Jose told me that Flyleaf is the best thing he's heard in years. Times are changing, amigo. No one says you have to like it though, God knows you've still got the right to dislike it."

"Bastards! That shit-eatin' Cuomo is probably eatin' all that right up too! Let me tell you somethin' about our precious gov-nor, you got a minute?"

"Actually I don't. The crowds will be in any minute, gotta get a table of cold foamers ready for 'em. Wouldn't want anyone here having to stay sober, would we? But hey, keep your head up in that crowd..."

I gave a last nod and ducked under the Beer Booth's restraining rope. I watched my weather-beaten roadie friend shuffle off pushing his speakers, spitting through the hole in his front teeth more pensively now, and occasionally giving a shake of his head as he pushed. I thought I could hear a faint muttering..."Mexican bastards..."

Still on edge, I knocked over three sleeves of cups immediately upon entering the booth. I hastily began rearranging boxes on the floor to make it seem as though I knew what I was doing and that I was supposed to be there. The booth manager called for the taps to be turned on and the first wave of cups to be filled. It wasn't a moment too soon. The gates opened at exactly 11 am with a whoosh, the same sound Pandora must have heard upon opening her fateful box. The crowd descended like a cloud of bats, and the losing battle to keep the supply in line with the demand began. 

A quick word about how the average Thon-goer was supposed to go about getting his half-hourly allotment of alcohol: First, he had to stop at the ticket stand and pre-purchase beverage tickets to be redeemed at the booths. This 'drastic' measure was enacted in the aftermath of K-Rockathon 2009, when a wild stampede of metal enthusiasts crashed through the tables at the beer tent--foaming at the mouth, frenzied with drunken greed, they made a run on the cash boxes and made off with an undisclosed sum. Several off them made off anyway; the rest went down under the force of the meaty fists and pepper spray of event security. I'm told the brown cloud hung over the Fairgrounds for days afterward, and all beverages served for the remainder of the concerts smacked of Habanero chilis. 

For the remainder of the day, I learned what it felt like to be the proverbial sailor dying of thirst while adrift at sea. Company policy forbade us from drinking on the clock, and I needed the $100 too badly to risk being sent home. By 6 PM the smell of Shock Top had so thoroughly permeated my nostrils that they felt caked in orange peels and coriander, with a dusting of wheat, and still I resisted the temptation to throw one back. I give myself extra credit for this feat because no one subjected to 12 hours of the kinds of ranting, screaming gibberish spouted by K-Rockathon's so-called 'bands' should ever have to do it sober. I passed the time instead by imagining what the studio practice sessions for the members of these otherwise-unemployable groups must sound like. It's difficult to picture the Beatles, while recording the White Album, turning to each other..."That take was pretty good, mate, but it could use more noise. And your vocals were far too comprehensible."

As morning wore on into evening and evening became night, the stream of faces at our counter steadily seemed to roll themselves into one fuzzily-outlined Face. The Face had red-rimmed eyeballs and multiple neck tattoos...beneath the Adam's apple the body seemed to be breaking down like a mud hut in the rain. The rivers of humanity had overflowed and left this mass, this Face, awash on the fair shores of Onondaga lake. In the fleeting moments that my eyes were able to focus themselves on individuals rather than their collective mass, I saw pairings so strange that Noah himself might have abandoned the Ark and left mankind to be swallowed by the flood. Aseptic, sexless women with the arms of twelve-year olds and shirts taken from the Hot Topic bargain bin being pawed, groped, and led around by men so large and fleshy that their skins appeared to be attempting an escape from their frames. Spray-tanned girls with fake breasts and irredeemable facial flaws holding hands with diminutive men in trucker hats with barbed wire tattoos. Shirtless yokels, more redbodies than rednecks, whose chins seemed to vanish into their chicken-thin upper bodies, tongue kissing girthy women in halter tops that contained 1/3 of the fabric necessary to render their appearance socially acceptable. At no point could I single out a heterosexual couple from the crowd and say, "Now, there's a smart match."

Despite the rain that came off and on throughout the evening, I had the sweats. It was sensory overload...an assault on the eyes and the ears. The clock struck ten and I dizzily signed out from the hours sheet, a doctor's scrawl brought on by fumes and fearful haste. I dashed from the Booth, trying to beat the insane traffic...in the distance, the sounds of car horns and curses rang out. Ah! A perfect coda to an exhausting day for the ears. Faster now, almost to the gates...I collided with a heavyset bald man wearing a t-shirt that read, "Save a Fuse, Blow an Electrician!" I couldn't bring myself to consider why he might be wearing red-lensed Oakley sunglasses at this time of night. Finally, to the car, out onto the proud highway, as the heavenly I-690 chorus of squealing tires and police sirens sung me home...

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. IV: What I've Learned This Year

   Rather than write another long-winded anecdote about my time in the Marshall Islands, I've decided to wrap things up with a comprehensive and long-winded list of things I've learned this year. These cover a range of topics, from the personal to the cultural to the philosophical. So, without further ado: This year, I have learned...

-That it is possible to be soul-crushingly lonely in a room full of people singing to and celebrating you

-That sarcasm doesn't translate well into other languages

-That the only acceptable reaction to waking up in the night with a cockroach on your face is to
scream "motherFUCKER!!" and spike that cockroach off the wall

-That complete strangers can treat you like royalty while treating their own children terribly, and find no contradiction inherent in that

-That having a say in what you eat on a day-to-day basis is a majorly underrated component of happiness, one I will never again take for granted

-That nothing switches on a primal brain-freeze quite like the torpedo silhouette of a shark cutting through the water under the moon

-That children, especially in groups, are just as capable of being shitty to each other as adults are

-That I'm terrified to try teaching in the U.S., where there are real expectations for teachers and helicopter parents earn their title

-That it is very possible to get sick of eating pancakes

-That a select few Marshallese people are more generous, decent human beings than 97% of the Americans I know

-That you can win over a room full of sixth-graders for a whole year by meeting a daily quota of one masturbation joke in their native tongue

-That anyone who voluntarily  goes celibate and sober for extended periods of time is probably a lunatic

-That our feelings, personalities, and identities are inextricably linked to our native culture, which only really becomes apparent when you experiment with "breaking free" of that culture

-That every single one of us is going to die someday, and consequently it is foolish to wish for a single second to pass more quickly than is already does

-That the previous statement is pretty much the epitome of "easier said than done"

-That writing and receiving real letters is about 1000% more enjoyable than e-mail

-That your sense of time completely goes out the window when you live in a world of perpetual summer

-That being a local celebrity is a pretty exhausting responsibility

-That it is possible to be nostalgic about Syracuse winters

-That unshakable moral principles can turn into loose guidelines pretty quickly when you have to adapt to a new life and a new culture

-That "this too shall pass". despite being one of the most worn-out clichés ever, has real teeth when you have to actually live in a situation that calls for thinking that way

-That it is possible to buy Ramen noodles for an entire bar and have no recollection of it

-That one of the greatest atrocities ever committed by the American government happened in these little islands, and hasn't ever really been atoned for (Google- "Bravo test")

-That SpongeBob SquarePants is set in one of the lagoons of Bikini atoll, and the fact that all the characters are able to talk and interact is allegedly a result of the aforementioned Bravo test

-That things that build character in the long term are never fun in the short term

-That it is in fact a small world, and it is impossible for me to go anywhere-even 9,000 miles from home- without meeting a half-dozen people who know my friends or acquaintances or old classmates

-That it doesn't feel like a small world at all when you fly across the entire Pacific Ocean

-That commonplace words-like "for", "at", and "have"- can have about a million different permutations and situational meanings, which makes teaching ESL a dicey proposition to say the least

-That living in your head because you don't have many people to talk to can be a useful exercise but gets either boring or terrifying after awhile

-That there are lots of different flavors of coconut

-That there are some kinds of fish I really enjoy

-That Americans are probably in the minority when it comes to getting riled up about public breastfeeding

-That if you stop drinking for five months, twice, you'll rediscover the jawline you forgot about in college

-That if anyone is still reading, I probably owe them big time

-That doing something worldly for a year doesn't entitle you to give advice, and you should probably stop now.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. III: Flying Fish Lacrosse

   Let me begin this tale by apologizing for the number of seemingly unrelated twists and turns it will take. Tangents are apparently a byproduct of spending months at a time as the only American in the immediate vicinity. There are a handful of people here who are perfectly capable of communicating in English, but as non-Westerners, they have no frame of reference for my usual conversational/written go-to's--Good Will Hunting quotes, sports trivia, literary discourse, and the like.

   From 4th grade through 8th grade, I attempted to mold myself into a competent lacrosse player. Fayetteville-Manlius has a proud lacrosse tradition, plus all the cute girls played for the ladies team at my proud alma mater, Wellwood Middle School (suck it, Eagle Hill). I played in the district's summer league for three years until I was old enough to play for the school's modified team in 7th grade. I was what you could optimistically call a "project" on the lacrosse field. I was terrified of getting hit, plus my right arm and hand were even more useless and uncoordinated then than they are now. Puzzlingly, I also opted for a Carolina Blue/Gold helmet at the GB Lax Store before the season began--definitely wouldn't stand out on a team whose colors were green and white, right?

   Anyway, I languished on the B-team for my two years on the team. My biggest career highlights were getting the ball stuck in the head of my stick after winning (!) a faceoff, and taking one shot that went about eight feet wide of the net. I proudly told my dad that I had almost scored, and, in what seemed like a dick move at the time (but seems much more sensible in hindsight), he told me that that probably wasn't something to be bragging about. What this is all getting around to is that I pretty much sucked at lacrosse, but I liked being on the team, so I consequently spent a lot of time off the field goofing off on the bench/sidelines. This left me with plenty of time to practice and perfect cool stick tricks. I got pretty good, actually--I figured that if I couldn't be a lacrosse player in the truest sense (as in, you know, actually playing), I could at least pass for one when the pads were off.

   I've forgotten just about all of these tricks now, but little did I know that one little scoop-and-cradle move would come in handy nine years down the line, in a remote corner of the Pacific where no one has ever heard of lacrosse. As with all of my Marshallese adventures, this one started unexpectedly, thanks to my friend Manny (readers may remember him from the turtle hunting story). I had gone to his house to bring him a few pairs of socks, which I had no use for but he could really use--the men here wear them under their flippers when they go spearfishing. I handed off the socks and chatted with him for a minute, but he was clearly in a hurry to get going somewhere. It was dark out, and I saw him dig out a hard hat and fasten it to his head. It was a contraption worthy of Richard Tyler from The Pagemaster (obscure pop-culture reference alert!)--the middle of the hard hat had been removed, front to back, and in in the gap rested a massive flashlight held in place by fishing line. He switched it on and headed to the back of his house, where he retrieved his fishing net.

   Marshallese fishing nets look like what the Native Americans might have used for lacrosse goalie sticks, had they been more interested in stopping shots and less interested in using their games to practice warfare. Entirely wooden, the nets are about seven feet long, with the net itself rigged from thick fishing line which has been meticulously woven and tied into a grid. Manny informed me that he and his neighbor, Action (3-time captain of the outer island All-Name Team) were going out after flying fish in Action's boat. Did I want to come?

   I did. Now, this may come as a surprise to those of you familiar with my noble, badass Eagle Scouting roots, but I had never actually caught a fish before the incident I'm writing about. Of any kind. Ever. This fact had made me feel steadily less and less manly as my year among some of the greatest fishermen alive progressed. As a frame of reference, on the same day as this story, my host father brought home a dogtooth tuna (jilo in Marshallese) that was honest-to-God the same size as my seven-year-old host brother. He caught this beast with only a handline, no reel or gaffe necessary.

   My job on this first expedition turned out to be incredibly superfluous. Action steered the boat, Manny perched on the bow edge with his net and helmet-flashlight combo scouring for prey. I...sat. And held another flashlight to help sweep the areas Manny might have missed. I watched him go seventeen-for-eighteen on fish that we saw, deftly maneuvering the huge net and lifting 15-inch flying fish (jojo) from the water. It was a cloudy, moonless night, which meant that there was a dearth of jojo out and about. Allegedly, they're drawn up to the surface by moonlight and starlight, and we had none. Long story short, I had zero part in actual fishing that time around.

   Fortunately for me, a rainy day later that week broke into a cloudless, starlit night, and Manny summoned me to join the expedition again. This time, I brought my host father's net (of the same make as Manny's), so as not to be denied the chance to scoop a few myself. Getting into the boat, I thought back to that modified lacrosse sideline and hoped I still had a trick or two to fall back on, since the instruments were so similar. Manny, as I had already seen, was fluid and graceful with his net, clearly a natural who had nevertheless spent countless hours perfecting his craft.

   (By the way, I think a pretty compelling social experiment would be to take a bunch of outer island kids from the RMI to the U.S. and enroll them in contact sports. The students out here are freakishly nimble, and strong for their small statures. They are also incredibly fearless-in any field not involving demons- and they have an incredible tolerance for pain. They tackle each other on gravel and broken glass, jump on each other out of coconut trees, and generally just beat each other senseless whenever they have a chance. Absolutely no fear of bleeding or bruising. The girls are as impressive as the boys in this regard. They are solidly built, and many of them can hit a baseball farther than their male peers. Some wealthy, opportunistic coach of football, soccer, lacrosse, or baseball/softball needs to come snatch up a bunch of these kids and watch them start to dominate American youth leagues.)

   I mentioned in my turtle post the surreal feeling I get every time I cross the reef's edge into open water on this atoll. It was even stranger this time around, in the pitch black, not being able to see the depths falling away beneath me. Manny was again perched on the bow, one leg over the edge. I stood some five feet behind him, knees bent, riding out the small swells in the same manner that my brothers and I used to ride the CENTRO bus on the way home from working at the state fair--unsupported, surfing the turns with no hands. Manny got to work right away, scooping and cradling as Action brought the boat up on our unsuspecting targets. Flying fish really are incredible looking things--silvery-blue, biplane-shaped bodies, 'wings' of pale pink, hovering at the surface waiting to take flight. The goal when fishing for these is to snag them while they're at rest, because it becomes an infinitely trickier task once they launch. If they keep their tails dragging in the water, they can change direction even while they 'fly', and it becomes this interesting sort of dance across the surface. If they leave the water completely, they can propel themselves a pretty ridiculous distance in a very short time.

   I ended up catching nine of them over the course of our expedition. I wasn't counting my misses, but there had to have been at least fifteen of those also. I also missed one that subsequently turned and flew smack into the side of the boat, killing himself on impact. It was an easy snag after that, but it's probably unsporting to count that one towards my total. Anyway, my lacrosse-cradle strategy seemed to get a passing grade, as Manny and Action both claimed to be impressed by my haul. I'm going to assume they were just being nice, because Manny caught over a hundred of them. He was like Nomar Garciaparra up there, just hoovering fish into the boat.

   The other highlight of that trip was seeing a shark out in the open water for the first time in my life. I've seen them in aquariums, and many times this year on my dinner plate, but never one in its element, cutting silently through the water. As we passed it, Manny shone his flashlight quickly across it, and then got back to looking for jojo. He and Action didn't react in the slightest to the sight, leading to the following exchange once my brain registered the shape of what we had just seen.
   "Hey, Manny...uh, what was that?"
   "Shark."
   "Oh."
I experienced a moment of internal turmoil at that moment that froze me in place and hinged my jaw shut. It was the confusion created by the combatting desires of my curiosity, which wanted to yell, "Get your light back on that goddamn thing STAT", and my newly-triggered caveman fear-brain, which wanted to scream, "Back to land! The ocean gods are demanding a snackrifice!". Strange what a 2-second glimpse of that unmistakable torpedo shape can do to the mind of someone who has spent his whole life comfortably landlocked.

   All in all, it was a fascinating experience, and one I'm eager to repeat as often as possible in my last few weeks here. It was a good feeling to catch those nine fish and bring my lifetime total to...nine. And seeing the fish we were pursuing (plus that big one that we weren't) move through and above the inky nighttime ocean was breathtaking. As (who else) Hemingway once said, "If you ever get so that you don't feel anything when you see flying fish go out of water...you better turn in your suit." Ernest can rest easily knowing that if I actually owned a suit, I would be in no danger of having to give it up.

  

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Vol. II: Ghost Ship

   During our program orientation in July, a group of us swam just about every day in the Ajeltake lagoon, a short walk from the elementary school we were staying in, across the street and down a path at the house of a very nice local family. It was a great place to bust out our snorkel equipment and the explore the reef communities underfoot--the lagoon was teeming with graceful angelfish, shy eels, those neon-colored fish that sell for 5 cents at pet stores, zebra-striped wrasse, and myriad other kinds that I know no names for. We would wade out to shoulder depth and alternate between snorkelling and floating, getting to know our fellow volunteers as we whiled away our free time in the electric blue water.

   Maybe a mile down from our swimming spot, we could see the bulk of a sizeable fishing boat. We assumed it was anchored and waiting to depart, but the first two weeks of orientation came and went without the ship ever changing position. Eventually we realized what an odd angle it rested at in the water, and concluded that it was more than likely beached on a sandbar, abandoned. A number of us made a pact that we would swim out to it before the end of orientation, when we would part ways for four-and-a-half months as we headed to our placements.

   Eleven of us set out on a Sunday morning after breakfast and walked down the road towards our launching point. (It is worth noting that on Majuro, the capital island and site of our orientation, it is not necessary to specify a road. There is literally only one, and it runs the entire length of the island.) We caused a minor uproar along the way, because large groups of white people are always an object of curiosity in the RMI, and our little band fared no differently. True to my Boy Scouting roots, I bore a length of forest-colored nylon rope tied around my waist, just in case. I had glorious visions of lassoing a cleat at the edge of the ship's deck and hauling myself hand over hand up the hull, to the wonder of my companions. Naturally, they would be full of gratitude for my timely (and badass) solution to what I assumed would be our chief logistical problem.

   After receiving permission from the family whose land we needed to cross to enter this new stretch of water, we entered the lagoon. The eleven of us fanned out at various speeds as we struck out for the ship, which we now saw was a good deal farther out than we had anticipated. I was the second person in line for the duration of the journey. This is not a reflection on my swimming prowess--I am competent at best, and not exactly resilient--rather, I just wanted to get the boring part of the adventure over with, and arrive at that towering red and white sentinel of the lagoon. Plus, I didn't want anyone to be able to claim they had to wait up for me.

   As we worked our way out into the water, I periodically looked behind me to check the progress of my companions. The number appeared to be dwindling--eleven, nine, seven, five...I was spared from any sentimental revels about comrades lost at sea in the brazen pursuit of the unknown when I saw them in the distance hauling themselves back ashore, tired and soaking.

   I arrived at the ship just behind another volunteer, a girl by the name of Julia. Julia gets points in my book for having frequented Manlius during her four year tenure at Colgate, and she is the oldest of five girls. Her father gets points in my book for living through that. Anyway, the ship was severely tilted on the sand bar, with the high side facing us. I have no idea how to estimate the length of a ship like that. I just know that it appeared massive--the hull and deck painted red and rusting; a white cabin and upper deck/control room rising above these. From the bow end, a formidable anchoring chain dropped some thirty feet into the water. The bow was pointed towards shore, but we had had to come up on the side to have a place to stand. It was calm inbetween waves, with waist-high water and level ground, but the slow swells came in at around seven feet, and it was quite an exercise to jump up and crest the waves each time a new one hit.

   The upside to these saline battering rams was that they provided me a way onto the ship that didn't involve utilizing expert knot-tying skills, deadly accuracy, or mermaid-seduction techniques. I simply sat in the ship's shadow and rode the natural elevator high enough to grab onto the outside of a now-windowless porthole. The next wave lifted my legs high enough to plant them inside a good-sized gap that had been rusted into the hull just below the deck rail. From there, I could maneuver myself through the hole, and did. Gentleman that I am, I went first for safety purposes, silently praying that my tetanus shot was up-to-date. Thankfully, I alit without incident.

   I helped Julia up through the gap and we took stock of our surroundings. I know pretty much zero about nautical terms, so please forgive any forthcoming errors of nomenclature. Directly in front of us was a door, and the cabin rose behind it, looming ominously, its paint peeling. The deck was upturned to such a degree that attempting any kind of movement without a railing would have been foolish, so we stayed off the main section of the deck. By this time, three other volunteers had made it to the ship--Michael, Jules, and Jessica. Five of us had made it from shore to ship, ready to explore the unknown.

   For most of my life, I assumed and applied an incorrect definition of the word "sublime". I had always believed it to mean wonderful, excellent, pleasant. But that's not it, not really. I was fortunate enough in my last quarter at OSU to take a fantastic lit. class with "The Mad Dr. T", Les Tannenbaum. In this class we explored the depths of Gothic narrative, and focused especially on the impact of the sublime in these works. More correctly, the term refers to things of such magnitude, aesthetic, or power as to render them beyond the scope of human reason or comprehension. Standing on board what we had dubbed "The Ghost Ship" was, by its correct definition, one of the first utterly sublime moments of my life. The ship's builder might well have been Ozymandias himself--"Look upon my works, ye mighty, and despair."

   I've never been a fan of wanton destruction, but decay has always fascinated me. Creaking, abandoned barns; crumbling, centuries-old bridges; rusting shells of once-proud ships--these things have a certain haunting aesthetic to them that I cannot explain but never tire of. I guess there's something comforting in the slow march of the ages, the continued success of entropy. Remember, all those horse-and-buggies were new once, too.

   So there we were, five relative strangers, standing on the edge of something resonant with that wonderful quality of being beyond mere words. It was then, as we were clapping each other on the back and congratulating ourselves on doing what we had set out to do, that we realized the only member of our expedition with a camera had been amng the first to turn back. Oops. My initial thought was that this was a huge blow to the experience. How could I capture a triumph like this without a camera? I am a child and disciple of the Facebook age, and I enjoy (too much) being in front of the lens. This was among the traits that earned me the nickname "Hollywood" from some of my more bullshit-proof college friends.

   But I came to realize that no matter how many pictures we might have taken that day--as we worked our way around the deck, into the haunting engine room, through the disastrous cabin--I could not make you see it the way we had. Even if we had managed to fit ourselves and the whole length of her into the frame, frozen and unchanging, it would not tell the ship's whole story. Trivial or not, that moment felt so much bigger than a paragraph. To paraphrase Kerouac, we were on the roof of the world and all we could do was yell, I guess. And yell we did, whooping it up as we clambered down ringing metal stairways, clanging chains and tugging mooring lines as we scrambled like drunken sailors across the unmoving vessel.

   At no time was the other-wordly quality that possessed the Ghost Ship more apparent than when I came around a corner to mount the cargo hold and found, beyond all reckoning, a three-foot tall tree growing out of the deck, surrounded by a small square plate of new grass. A mile from shore, in the midst of abandonment and the harshest conditions imaginable--salt, wind, heat--life had found a way. And I found that fact to be just as incomprehensible, just as sublime, as the massive decaying ship creaking beneath my feet.

Marshall Islands Chronicles, Volume I: Nighttime Speedboat Turtle Hunting

 I was walking home from school on Thursday afternoon when I ran into my friend Manny on the island's main path. He mentioned that he was about to go on a kawonwon, which means "sea turtle hunt", with a few other men from the village. Having only my lessons plans and a nightly routine of shower-read-sleep to look forward to, I did the prudent thing and invited myself along. I had resolved to break my monotonous daily after-school rituals, and this seemed like a good opportunity to make myself a more integrated member of the community.
  "Will we be gone long?" I asked.
  "No," he replied, "not long."

  Perfect. I ran home, grabbed a camera and my life jacket, and headed for the lagoon. Preparations were already underway--rinsing out snorkels, spooling endless amounts of fishing line, and loading the snacks--in this case, an entire pandanus fruit, which was large enough to serve all six of us taking the trip.

  We motored out into the lagoon. As many times as I experience the crossing of the reef's edge into the open ocean, I can never get over the sublime end-of-the-earth feeling it gives me to see such an awesome drop down into the rich blue water. Things got a lot less picturesque about five minutes later, as we entered into some heavy swells, which persisted for the rest of the hour it took us to reach our destination- a small, uninhabited island about 2.5 miles from Aur.

  We tied up the boat and went ashore amid a storm of terns and frigatebirds, and hauled our supplies onto the beach. We followed the tracks of a turtle up the sand, a 3-foot wide pattern of dragging bulk and shuffling flippers. Manny immediately set to work with a long, sharp stick, driving it into the dune where the tracks ended. He was not disappointed--his fifth thrust saw the stick's tip covered in yellow goo, and he began shoveling with his hands until he uncovered his prize--a cache of perfectly rounded, soft-shelled turtle eggs. We collected these in a bucket and set them aside for dinner.

  Afterwards, I went on a jambo (hike) with Herby and Timothy, two of the other men on the expedition. Five minutes into the walk, they had each wrangled a shiny black seabird with their bare hands. Timothy is lean and quick, but Herby is bigness incarnate, and I was pretty impressed by his nimble grab. They were beautiful birds, too--jet black with white crests, and beaks like knitting needles. Neither the men nor the birds made much fuss during any of this, as though each of them knew their roles perfectly.

   We circumnavigated the whole island in a matter of 25 minutes or so, including a brief jaunt through one of the most ethereal collections of trees I've ever seen. They were towering, without branches for the first forty feet or so, and their bark was almost silver. The whole thing looked like Middle Earth transplanted in the jungle.

  The sun was setting as we arrived back at camp, and the dinner preparations began. Those majestic birds whose praises I have sung quickly had their necks snapped and feathers plucked, and they were soon spitted on green saplings over a tidy cooking fire. On a separate blaze five feet away, the gigantic pot of turtle eggs was put on to boil in saltwater. At some point I began to wonder a few things: When would the 'turtle' part of our turtle hunt actually begin? Was this an overnight activity? Would I be playing hooky from teaching the next day, in pursuit of something whose taste I didn't even particularly enjoy? Luckily, Manny was able to illuminate some of the finer points for me while the eggs boiled and the birds roasted.
  "When it gets dark, we go to the water. After we catch the turtle, we go home. Maybe soon, maybe middle of the night. Okay?"

  Fortunately this was okay with me, since I didn't really have another option. While the food cooked, we began drinking coffee. Far and away the most successful western import in the RMI is coffee, and Marshallese men in particular fiend for the stuff in a fashion that would put to shame all of the Starbucks-addicted girls I knew in college. Each man also has his own strategy for making the perfect brew, though to my uninitiated palate, the instant coffee-powedered creamer-sugar triumvirate tastes exactly the same no matter which order you put them in or how slowly the creamer is added. We talked (okay, they talked, I barely understood a word) over a few cups of it and eventually dinner was ready.

  There's a reason that stores put juicy chicken legs and breasts on display, cleaned and separated from the body, before sale. Mainly it's because it looks a whole lot more appetizing than being served the whole bird at once, from the tip of its beak to its kinked neck to its blackened feathers to its roasted lungs. This thing truly looked like someone had taken a flamethrower to Beaky Buzzard at close range. But hey, when in Rome, do as the Romans do, and when in the Marshall Islands, ask as few questions about your food as possible.

  Down it went, tasting slightly more agreeable than the stuff you scrape off your grill after a 5-hour 4th of July barbecue. I managed to take the edge off with a few turtle eggs, which unfortunately do not nicely harden after boiling like a chicken egg does. While they actually taste pretty good, they retain their (to put it mildly) semen-like consistency even when cooked, and it can get all in your hair and nose and drip off your face if you're not careful with your mouth. But I digress.

  Darkness fell. Manny and Herby donned their goggles and snorkels and fired up their flashlights as they hit the water, wielding a big coil of rope and a brutal-looking gaffe. After a time, we saw them signalling with their lights from somewhere a few hundred yards off shore. We jumped into the boat and sped off in pursuit. We pulled up alongside them, and Herby tossed the weighted end of the rope into the boat as Manny struggled with something under the water that clearly outweighed him. We hauled at the rope, and Herby came up underneath the turtle to shove it on board as we tugged on it.

  This thing was an absolute beast. Massive, glossy shell; pebbled, scaly flippers; a tail like a tapered club. It didn't seem to struggle or protest much, but it waved its tail like crazy for the first few minutes. We roared off in the boat, the men whooping up their triumph, and headed for home under a blanket of stars. On the way back, we met those same ugly swells head-on, and within five minutes we were absolutely drenched. By the way, whoever decided to use the name "Ocean Spray" to market a line of sweet, refreshing juices clearly had no idea what they were talking about. There is nothing tasty or refreshing about the spray of the ocean after the third or so shot to the face. I found it comical at first that grown men who weren't swimming would put on Snork-worthy goggles to take a boat trip, but they had the last laugh as I tried to keep my eyes open in the cold, salt-stinging spray. I also got hit by a flying fish at some point. Our boat passed through a number of swarms of bioluminescent jellyfish, their electric blue glow helping light the way home like miniature neon signs. Or tazers.

  It would feel disingenuous not to mention that on the ride home, I also pissed myself a total of three times. The first two times were out of urgency--the coffee absolutely doing me in--and the third time was out of convenience, once I realized how warm I had gotten the first two times. So this trip marked a number of firsts for me: first seabird dinner, first time helping hunt an endangered species with intent to eat, first time struck by a hydroplaning fish at high speeds, and first time pissing my pants in front of five grown men. Thankfully, it was pitch black and we were being constantly soaked anyway.

  I would like to add, in conclusion, that despite all of the weirdness, there was not a single unpleasant moment in the six hours that we were gone.The company and the experience made all of the minor inconveniences seem like something thrilling and fun. I've discovered during this island year that I truly love being on boats of any kind, especially when piloted by a race of people who are some of the most impressive ocean navigators in the history of the world. This trip was no exception. As we sped towards the warm lights of home, with the cold sea in my face and warm piss on my legs, I couldn't imagine feeling more alive.