Of Tailgating, Comic Books and Barack Obama

In "A Beautiful Mind," Russel Crowe's character frantically circles letters in magazine articles thinking he's cracked a secret code. His desperate search for deeper meaning in a place is does not exist is sad, but inspired nonetheless. At times I try to parse some sub-textual insight from the events of my day, hunting for a common theme and wondering if I'm as crazy as Crowe's mathematician or just bored. Thursday of last week was no different...

In early afternoon, the fantastically talented comic book illustrator and part-time sequential art teacher Phil Jimenez asked me to come and informally chat with his SVA students about the comic book/animation industry. As I sat in Bryant Park, watching him go over his students' sample pages, I was blown away by how talented these kids were -- and at 19 years-old, they really were just kids. They all had refreshingly diverse styles, attitudes and a collective buoyancy that made me wish I wasn't such a curmudgeon in when I was their age. More than their eagerness, I was taken with their optimism. As a second-year, it's too early to be bitter and too soon to be fearful -- they exuded a perfect balance of quiet confidence and hopeful anticipation, which I found intoxicating.

Hours later I stumbled onto an entirely different sort of intoxication in the parking lot of Giant's Stadium, which despite the teams New York tag, is actually in New Jersey. The parking lot looked much like the front lawn of a fraternity house the day of a big game at a major university. Pulling in, I felt the same sort of dread I would at the Phi Alpha Theta party: These hulking drunks know I don't belong here and they are going to haze me for it. Seeing as how it was New Jersey AND a football game, everyone was three times my size, so I was right to be scared. Our version of tailgating involved two twelve packs propped up on the trunk of a sedan and the informality of it made it somehow felt more illegal than what everyone else was doing, which was nice. At least the Bud Light allowed me to fit in. Through the grill smoke, I could make out hundreds of people all wearing blue Giant's jerseys and they were all smiling, drinking and throwing footballs around (my Pavlovian response to an oncoming football is to duck, so thankfully no one tried to throw me a pass). Inside the stadium after the Giants scored their first touchdown against the Patriots, the crowd began chanting "18-1" (I hid the fact I had no idea what this meant and later learned the Giants won last year's Super Bowl and that was their record) and doing The Wave. In this pre-season game, the excited, blue-uniformed boozers looked forward to a second Bowl victory and again, I found their enthusiasm infectious. I don't know a Wide Receiver from a Wireless one, but I left early hoping the blue guys went all the way....

On the radio in the car, we tuned in to hear Barack Obama deliver his acceptance speech at the Democratic National Convention. I can't recall a time when I've ever flipped to AM radio to hear a candidate speak and as we got home and raced inside to catch the remainder on television, I realized that for the third time that day, I was completely hooked into unbridled (see where this is going?) optimism -- or as Mr. Obama has distilled it to: Hope. Afterward, the NY CBS broadcaster cut to what looked like an American Legion hall. Two dozen older men and women were watching together while seated at the sort of tables one might play bingo at. The news anchor interviewed an older, heavyset woman with a flower-print blouse, poofy hair and modest jewelry. The woman spoke about how 40 years ago, her father feared being assaulted for going to the polls and now, on the anniversary of Martin Luther King's historic speech to the 250,000 people gathered in Washington, D.C.'s Mall, she was seeing something she never thought would happen: a black man accepting the Presidential nomination. She then burst into joyous sobs.

I try not to get my hopes up for anything, lest they be dashed. It's better to be surprised than disappointed. But those three events reminded me that being guardedly pessimistic is boring and cowardly. I saw three kinds of hope: The art students had an individual optimism -- a confidence in themselves that most adults (this guy) lack; the Giants fans had hope for an other -- a unification by way of a common goal, albeit one you don't necessarily help to achieve; Obama, finally, represents collective hope -- the individual, the bystander, the team and the man himself.

In elections past, I wanted Al Gore to win, but I didn't really love him (although after "An Inconvenient Truth," I thought about sending him a bouquet of organic roses and sustainable chocolates in a recycled heart-shaped box), but I really, really love Obama. For the first time, after that day, I finally shook the disdain for politics I'd so carefully adopted over the last eight years and shouted "Go team!" knowing that today, the circled letters in the magazine really did mean something.