SCOTT SHAFFER

I’m a Cliché, and That’s OK

It’s hard to write about yourself, but here goes.

I lived in Los Angeles for a year and a half, and I tried to love it. I got tacos from food trucks, went to the beach, visited all the major art museums, and hung out with film students. But I didn’t love it. I’ve recently realized that I hated it.

After visiting San Francisco and finding it the most beautiful, dense, walkable and diverse city I’ve ever visited (have you ever heard that before?), I reflected on my instinctive abhorrence of clichés. I used to think groupthink was bad. I used to think you couldn’t box me in or reduce me to a simple stereotype. I used to think I was special.

I used to be wrong.

Here’s a quick rundown of the characteristics and possessions that cement me in the 20-something liberal hipster camp:

• A liberal arts education (degree in philosophy)
• A Mac laptop
• Outerwear from REI
• Moleskine notebooks
• A drive to eat ethnic food that’s technically obsessive and compulsive
• A semi-ironic infatuation with top-40 pop and mainstream hip hop (my desktop background is an image of Nicki Minaj)
• Knowledge of what post-rock means
• Cognizance of typography, spelling, and grammar that occasionally disrupts everyday functioning
• Affinity for craft beers, cheap bourbon
• Encyclopedic knowledge of Arrested Development and The Wire
• Dogmatic adherence to the tenets of New Urbanism
• A vague desire to get something pierced or tattooed
• Slim-straight jeans, flannel shirts, cardigans, retro sneakers, and Casio watches
• A belief that the government should probably do more about the environment, health care, ending wars, closing Guantánamo, promoting high-speed rail, and taxing the super-rich
• A tumblr blog

So basically, I’m a caricature. This is me formally declaring that I’m an unreconstructed, garden-variety, latte-sipping, liberal coastal urban élite. From now on, I’ll try to say what I think, without regard for how much it makes me sound like That Guy.

I love that San Francisco is the most European of America’s cities. David Foster Wallace and Michael Chabon wrote very funny, sad, moving books, but I’m not crazy about Dave Eggers. I think I’ll start doing yoga when I get back to Minneapolis. I might want to start a bluegrass/folk-rock band, too. Does anyone want to listen to some Kanye?

Update: I was a strict vegetarian for a couple years, but now I vacillate between ovo-lacto-pesco-vegetarianism and eating free-range meat, too.

Update 2: I usually don’t watch sports, but I can make exceptions for tennis, soccer, and sometimes cricket.

Check out this bristly mofo

Guess who’s back?!?!

The beard. That’s who.

You know how kids who used to be fat in high school have strange complexes about food and body image? Same this with me, chemo, and hair. Recovering from having a face that resembled an oblong, undercooked pancake means I want all the textural and shade-related adornments and filigrees that my mug can muster. Right now that means keeping my hair short to accentuate my widow’s peak, maintaining two (not one) dominating, expansive eyebrows, and nursing this brambly week-old beard into something monumental. That’s the facio-hairal game plan, and it trumps all other concerns.

The next barber who asks me if I’d like my eyebrows “cleaned up” is getting blue comb liquid splashed in their face.

Thanks

2010 wasn’t all bad. My last post was in the style of bloggers who wished for 2010 to be drawn and quartered, and pointed out all the terrible, horrible, no good, very bad things that happened during the Year From Hell.

But I have tons to be thankful for. The chemo worked. I’ve been gainfully employed for most of the year. My insurance company paid out more than expected for the car that was stolen. My brother had a son. My temp job was incredibly understanding of my medical demands. Throughout my illness, my friends were compassionate and generous. My family, even more so.

But Sonia takes the cake. 2010 began with my girlfriend taking care of my nauseous self. Little did I know that it would happen again later in the year, under very different circumstances. By driving me to doctors appointments, filling my prescriptions, sitting with me in the day hospital, bringing me food, and generally loving me while I looked/felt like hell, Sonia saved my life this year. And that’s pretty cool.

Fuck 2010*

Preamble: I know this isn’t an original thing to say, but fuck 2010. Fuck it in humiliating and painful ways while its whole extended family is forced to watch. There are a bunch of things we can all agree sucked about this year: the economy is still recessed (12.5% unemployment in the Golden State), Carl Paladino exists, that gay kid killed himself, a quarter of a million people died in Haiti, BP squirted googols of gallons of oil into the Gulf of Mexico, Pakistan flooded, Chile shook (and those miners got trapped), the Catholic Church covered up the covering up of its uncovering helpless children, and Snooki became famous. The whole world sucked, basically. We know that. But this is just about me. Sorry, world.

Fuck living with crabby, crazy potheads.

Fuck unpaid internships.

Fuck crying to your mom, asking for medical advice.

Fuck cancer.

Fuck CT scans, intimate ultrasounds, and orchiectomies.

Fuck injecting poison into your veins, bad hospital food, and your hair falling out.

Fuck lying in an empty office at work — nauseous, shivering, and alone.

Fuck not having any friends in this town.

Fuck your grandma dying.

Fuck your car getting stolen.

Fuck being alone tonight.

Fuck it all. I’m going home.

*Addendum

Most dreaded questions

Two weeks ago, it was: So, are you like a Nazi or something?

Now, it’s: Do you have mold growing on your head?

Long time, no blog

Dear friends, family, and strangers:

I have cancer. Had cancer?

Fought cancer. And won.

Tentatively.

It all started in April of this year, when I went in to a doctor because my junk was feeling a little unusual. After three highly-educated people gave me the TSA treatment, I was diagnosed with testicular cancer and scheduled for a radical orchiectomy a few days later. The surgery went well, and I recovered quickly. At my three month check-up, however, they told me that one of my lymph nodes had changed, and I’d have to go through nine weeks of intravenous chemotherapy.

Fast forward through three months of sore arms, early bedtimes, and sundry intestinal difficulties. Things are returning to normal. I can go for walks without getting sore or tired. My eyebrows are growing back, thank god. My stomach is being less of a spaz.

A post-treatment checkup revealed no change in my lymph nodes. That’s a good thing. So until my three-month checkup, I’m going to relax and wait for my hair to grow back.

And tumble, of course.

Yours truly,

Scott

P.S.: Other crazy stuff happened in the last few months, like me getting a job, me having my car stolen, and my nephew being born, but those are stories for other posts.