I start my new job tomorrow. It will be infinitely better than my last job, for the following reasons, in no particular order:

• I will not drive 80 miles a day. I will drive about 10.
  
• I will not spend 2 hours a day in a car. I will spend about 20 minutes in my car.
  
• I will not spend $2,000 a year on gas for my car. I will spend about $500, if that.
  
• I will not work on weekends.
• I will not work until midnight five nights a week, or ever.
  
• I will have lots of better opportunities to socialize with people, when normal people socialize. Like, in the evening.
• I will not have to fight to get a night off to do trapeze. I will always be able to do trapeze.
• Conrad will not have to stay up late and sacrifice sleep to spend time with me.
• My family will not worry about me coming in from work late at night or driving on a dangerous road.

Not to mention the following, which actually have to with my job, not my life outside job:

• I get paid more.
  
• I get vacation days.
• I don't have to meet a daily deadline.
• I don't have to work in a cubicle.
• I will get to write again.
• I will get to work in a magazine environment again.
• This fits into my larger career plan much better than my other job.

Tonight I was laying out the front page of the (Juniper Times), as I do, and I was reading through the lead story. It was about an event at the local high school where they simulate a drunk-driving accident and carry students covered in fake blood away in body bags so that everybody cleans up and drives straight on their way home from the Prom. As I was reading, I came across the following quote, high in the story:

"One in 10 drivers on every road is drunk," said (NHS) Assistant Principal (Tony Mayfield) over a loudspeaker to the students. "There's a 200-percent chance that you or someone in your family will either cause or be the victim to a drunk-driving accident ... The prospect is more than likely — it's a virtual certainty."

First of all, nothing is a virtual certainty. More important, though, is the math here: a 200-percent chance? WTF? Is that supposed to mean it's already happened? I was like, okay, obviously this is a typo. They meant 100 percent. Or 20 percent. So I called the editor of this paper.

She said, "Yes, I talked about that quote with (Jennifer (the writer)) and she was adamant that was what the assistant principal said. And we want to be accurate in quoting people."

Right. Even when they cite statistics that are mathematically impossible. Good journalistic principle. Let's print that. 

I said, "Well, okay, so you want to leave it in then?"

She said: "Yes. I'm fairly certain he (the assistant principal) was using hyperbowl*." 

I said, "Yes, (Gail), I'm certain he was using that."

*hyperbole 

First I will tell you how it was that I came to have an opportunity to hang out with Chuck Klosterman, writer, social commentator, and general funnyman extraordinaire. Some of you may remember the maniacal short piece I wrote after meeting Klosterman briefly last year at Spin Magazine. For those of you who are new, you can read it here, if you are interested.

After I met CK last year at Spin, I got his email address and corresponded with him, in a very limited capacity. I emailed him and told him how much I enjoyed meeting him, then contacted him last summer to get a galley copy of his upcoming book before it was out. Then, suddenly, about two months ago, I found out that Chuck had been fired from Spin. (Just about the whole damn staff got canned, in fact, as the magazine took on new management/ownership.) I was like, DAMN, I guess I’ll never speak to Chuck Klosterman again, because I only had his Spin email address. It wasn’t a week later that my friend Jace called me up and was like, “Dude, Klosterman is coming to UGA to talk.” And I was like, “YES.”

I knew right then I would hang out with Chuck Klosterman. It was sort of a joke among my friends, but not really. Maybe they thought I was joking, but my thinking was, why shouldn’t we hang out? To me, people are just people, and I think I can hold my own in social situations and what else was he going to do in Athens?

So Wednesday rolled around and I went to see CK speak with Jace and after, Chuck was signing books, so I got in line with my copies of “Fargo Rock City” and “Killing Yourself to Live.” When I got up to talk to Chuck, I said, “Hi, I’m April. I met you last year at Spin.” And he said, “Yeah, you looked familiar,” which is a nice thing to say, but a lie, I’m sure, and as he signed my books I asked him if he’d done anything fun in town and he said he’d just gotten there in time to talk. So then I said, “You should come downtown and get a drink with me and my friend Jace here.” He sort of laughed and asked where we were going and said maybe I’ll see you there and I walked away, cringing under the disdainful stares of the student programming board who overheard my offer. I then walked up the stairs and realized my delivery had been terrible; that there was no way Chuck Klosterman was going to just venture out looking for some bar he’s never heard of in a city he’s never visited with no time frame to work with. So, with some encouragement from Jace, I got back in line, and at the risk of looking totally presumptuous or crazy or whatever, handed him my number and said to call if he was interested in coming out.

Jace departed for band practice and I left and went home, where I decided that even if Chuck Klosterman didn’t want to hang out with me, he is the type of person who would call and say he wasn’t coming. About half an hour after I made this decision, Chuck Klosterman dialed my number and said he was interested in coming to have a drink. I gave him walking directions to the bar and went into freakout mode. Jace was tied up practicing, so it was just going to be Chuck and me. You are thinking, oh, how great, but I was thinking, “I am the dullest person ever and what the hell am I going to find to say to this incredibly interesting and insightful person?”

But then I got downtown and met Chuck at my favorite bar and my attitude was instantly different. All my freaking out and fantasizing about what it would be like to hang out with Chuck Klosterman have absolutely nothing to do with Chuck Klosterman as a person. In my opinion, this is true for any famous person you could insert into this equation: My idea of what it would be like to hang out with Britney Spears or Geena Davis or Peter Jackson or Eric Clapton is probably 1,000 times different than what it is actually like. The reality of hanging out with Chuck Klosterman for a while was fun and interesting and pleasant and all the things you might think about hanging out with any person you like at a bar. I didn’t feel self-conscious and I barely felt aware of the fact that I was chatting with someone who is famous. Of course, this would have been an entirely different situation if Chuck Klosterman was someone people would recognize on the street and stare at, or if he got hassled by fans and paparazzi or whatever. But take any famous person to a weenie roast at the Center for the Blind, and they’re just going to be another person eating weenies. The knowledge that someone is a celebrity (or a celebrity writer) is the only difference.

So, duh, right? Of course we know ‘Celebrities: They’re just like us!’ But here is the weirdest part about the whole experience: Not only did I anticipate my time with Chuck to be somehow different or more spectacular than time I might spend with anyone else who is not famous, but in retrospect, I remember it as a very surreal experience not likely to be duplicated in my lifetime. But the actual reality of it, in the moment it was happening, was absolutely normal, and felt neither surreal nor overly spectacular. What gives?

My guess is that it has something to do with the phenomenon that applies to just about everyone in my life: I have an idea, a definition of a person in my head, and while I may revise that idea, I can in no way anticipate all actions that person could possibly take, attitudes they may adopt, etc. So while my idea of my sister, for example, is finite, she operates her life mostly independent of my ideas of her, and when we are actually together and I am experiencing the reality of Angela, there is the possibility she will surprise me or behave in a way that is contradictory to my expectations. Contrary to the theory espoused by Mr. Klosterman in "Sex, Drugs and Cocoa Puffs," I think people are much more complex than we allow ourselves to believe. At the very least, my interaction with her will add some data to the definition of Angela, some of which I will remember and absorb and some of which I will not use, but the point is that she has the upper hand during the time I am in her physical presence for how I am going to perceive her. And for the duration we are together, it is nearly impossible to ignore the reality of what another person is doing or saying, no matter what ideas you are projecting onto them. But when we part, Angela only exists to me in my mind. And she has no control, at that point, over how I think of her.

As pop psychology has told us so many times, nothing is more important than the moment you are in. It’s the time when you can most accurately determine what the truth is. And the truth is, Chuck Klosterman was a fun and interesting person, no more, no less. But now, he’s not around, and all I’m left with are his three books, which feel much bigger than what I experienced the other night, and in retrospect, make the whole evening seem surreal.

I think it’s fairly obvious I’ve been reading way too much Chuck Klosterman.

So the moral of this story is: Ask for what you want, even if you might get rejected, because if you don't ask, you most certainly won't get it, and if you do, you might. And also, celebrity obsession has nothing to do with reality.

P.S. Chuck, if you ever somehow read all this, I want you to know that I never at any time stalked you. I hope we can still be best friends.

So, tonight I am going to hang out with Chuck Klosterman. If you don't know who Chuck Klosterman is, obviously you are not my friend, because he is my favorite author, and you would know that if you were really my friend. And if you didn't know that and by default are not my friend, why are you here? Maybe you want to be my friend? Better take a number, hombre.

Why would Klosterman want to hang out with me, you ask? I think the real question is why would Chuck Klosterman NOT want to hang out with me? And there is no answer to that question.

Later: the report on my (presumed) success in executing said plan.