More Useless Knowledge?

Book summary

"More Useless Knowledge?" by Andrew Davie offers a diverse collection of informal essays that blend personal experiences with pop culture analysis. Covering topics from the Macau Grand Prix to recovering from a brain aneurysm, Davie delves into the music of Bad Religion and Black Sabbath, and the intricacies of films like "Kickboxer 4: The Aggressor." This book is a treasure trove for those seeking philosophical insights and a fresh perspective, encapsulating the idea that humor often arises from the passage of time. A must-read for diverse interests, where comedy and tragedy intertwine.

Excerpt from More Useless Knowledge?

Track 1: Losing a Whole Year

This track represents the final year of my relationship with my then-girlfriend. I had been giv-en to her as a “birthday present.” Basically, I was at a bar, met two girls who were headed to their friend’s birthday party, and they invited me to go with them. Since they hadn’t gotten her a gift, they joked that I would be the birthday present. For the rest of the evening, after the gifts were bestowed, one of her friends (who’d had a little too much to drink) kept yell-ing, “Unwrap your present!” And yes, one day I thought I’d be telling this story on a talk show.

“So, wait a second,” the host would begin.

I’m thinking Conan O’Brien, although beggars can’t be choosers.

“You were your wife’s birthday present?” He would have just the right amount of awe in his voice.

“Yes,” I would reply, and wait for the applause to die down before I continued with the sto-ry.

Earlier that year, my girlfriend and I had moved in together. Our cohabitation would last for ten months. We had been in a relationship for four years before we decided to find an apart-ment. This was 2010, and I was almost thirty-two years old. I was not yet wise enough to re-alize that our moving in together was a last-ditch effort on her part to save our relationship from disintegrating entirely. At the time, I recall telling her how certain I was about our rela-tionship, and that it was fine if she felt anxious or doubtful. When playing Blackjack, this is similar to feeling confident enough to double down on your bet when you don’t have a face card.

Back then, I was working with my father, day-trading options. I was probably in the mindset to gamble. Mostly, I was trading covered call options. Options are financial instruments. They allow you to either buy or sell a certain amount of shares of stock at a fixed price at a future time. Covered calls mean you already own the underlying stock, so you’re hedging if the price goes down by selling the right to own the stock to someone else. If the strike price (the price at which you are going to buy/sell) is more than the underlying stock price, then the op-tion expires, and the seller keeps the premium (money paid for the chance to own the stock option). Of course, the subprime mortgage crisis hit around this time. There are a multitude of reasons for the subprime mortgage crisis which include a housing bubble and predatory loan lending tactics. As it became more difficult to navigate the stock market, I talked with my dad, who foresaw the end of our business venture and suggested I look for an alternate means of income.

At that point in my life, the only thing I had ever been passionate about was writing. So I ap-plied to graduate schools. I only looked at programs within the greater New York area since my girlfriend was an aspiring actress and needed to stay near the city. She had done some off-off-Broadway work. Who knows whether I would have been able to get into any pro-grams out of state? It’s easy to look back and reflect on missed opportunities. Of course, this is a dangerous rabbit hole to go down. Plus, I am very happy with the program I would later attend: Adelphi University.

On February 23, 2010, I came home nursing bruised ribs and found her crying on the couch. I had taken a Judo class and rolled around with the guitarist of a hardcore band who, in 2018, embarked on a tour in Europe. He probably outweighed me by a good sixty pounds. He also possibly thought I owed him money or had offended a member of his family.

Concerning my girlfriend, I guess I had seen the writing on the wall, but she told me she wanted to end things, and I broke down regardless. I didn’t take the dissolution of our rela-tionship well. I hadn’t yet survived having a ruptured brain aneurysm to help keep things in perspective. Eventually, I wrote a short story inspired partially by this breakup in which Su-perman discovers his ex-girlfriend is dating Bizarro Superman. This will not be the first time I make this mistake (believing a relationship is not over, not that I’m Superman). This reminds me of a rather dark anecdote. I had a friend who lived in Hong Kong and was out at a party. He was standing on the balcony of an apartment, which was pretty high off the ground. One of the guests, who was drunk, thought he could safely jump across to the neighboring balco-ny. When someone suggested he not try, the guest said, “I can make it.” He tried. Sadly, he didn’t make it. My brother, now a doctor, once told me the most commonly heard phrase someone says before having to visit the emergency room is “hold my beer.”

Track 2: Narcolepsy

My girlfriend moved out of our apartment two months after we broke up. This was the period between the end of my relationship with her and the beginning of graduate school. The rest of the time she and I lived together, I spent in a haze. We had been living in a two-bedroom apartment, and before she moved out, I moved into the guest bedroom. This was awkward since we were still living together. We made it work, though. Our schedules didn’t overlap, so for the majority of the time, if one of us was at home, the other person would be out. After she left, every time I was in the living room, I could look to my left and peer into the barren cavern that had once been our bedroom. Now it was just an empty wooden floor, which had collected an assortment of dust bunnies.

I neglected to turn the room into something new once she departed. As if the timing couldn’t have been more perfect, I had been considering purchasing an engagement ring. Looking back at it, it was best for everyone involved that we didn’t remain together. She married the first person she dated after we broke up. Again, this will not be the first time this happens. There’s a movie with Dane Cook entitled Good Luck Chuck. Cook plays Chuck, who is cursed by a former classmate. He can never find true love. However, if a woman sleeps with him, she will meet her true love right afterward. It’s a shame that this is what I think of sometimes when I reflect on the state of my romantic relationships. Why couldn’t I have more similarities with Casanova or Warren Beatty, you ask? Well, that’s a great question.

Track 3: Semi-Charmed Life

I started the MFA program at Adelphi University on Long Island. Things were going much better, and I felt like I was making a lot of progress as a writer. Some friends of mine set me up with a divorced dancer/choreographer. She was about five feet tall, a dynamo with bound-less energy. For the first time in a long time, I felt like an adult. She and I didn’t have that much in common, but I liked being with someone. She knew what she wanted. Later, I learned this was not a unique thing, but at the time it seemed more impressive. Our relation-ship worked well for about two months. Then my drinking got in the way, and I also realized we didn’t have much of a future together. But let me tell you, she was something else. She also had a dog who tried to hit me in the testicles every chance he got. The first two times it happened, I thought it was accidental, but then I realized he had it out for me. The only way he could have made it any clearer was if he spoke to me in English and told me flat out he was going to hit me in the balls.

Track 4: Jumper

After my girlfriend moved out of our two-bedroom apartment, I needed to look for a new place to live. My brother was going to leave town to attend medical school, so I moved into his studio apartment one neighborhood over from where I had lived. A few weeks after I took over, his place was infested by mice.

I contacted the landlord who dispatched the handyman who set up traps, but they weren’t effective. None of the mouse traps worked. So, I decided to take matters into my own hands. I realized the mice would head for the kitchen eventually, so I laid all the traps along the en-tryway. There was no way for them to cross the threshold without becoming ensnared.

Usually, very late at night, one at a time they emerged from my closet, paused to hide under the television set, and ran for the kitchen. A few moments would elapse, and then I would hear the thrashing and squeaking of the mouse trying to get loose from the trap.

In the end, I caught all of them this way, I think. It was at least five or six. It was a traumatic experience for everyone involved.