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"  While drinking beers in my friend Gabe&amp;#039;s backyard, he tells me something I already know -- but haven&amp;#039;t been told yet -- which is not that the state of the union is fucked, but that I&amp;#039;m fucked. This assignment to drive across the country and write my own State of the Union is a mission impossible on so many different levels -- especially when the person that they asked to do it (me) has pretty much never even watched a State of the Union address.  The rest of my friends universally agree with Gabe. And then we pretty much immediately get off topic, and we&amp;#039;re discussing the benefits associated with purchasing local produce, when Melissa, Gabe&amp;#039;s girlfriend, asks, &amp;quot;Are we still talking about your article?&amp;quot; I tell her, in a way, yes, and she tells me, &amp;quot;You&amp;#039;re being asked to answer such a broad, general question that can be misconstrued in so many different ways that I think you need to develop more specific questions. You&amp;#039;re going to get so many different answers from everybody that you&amp;#039;re not going to be able to put it all together.&amp;quot;  Which is exactly what I&amp;#039;m afraid of. &amp;quot;And when you&amp;#039;re talking about the state of the union, you&amp;#039;ve got economic state, political state, social state,&amp;quot; Gabe reminds me, which gives me a migraine, because I&amp;#039;m well aware of all that, and I have no idea where I&amp;#039;m going to even start with this thing. Not that any of my friends have much of a better clue -- I doubt they&amp;#039;ve ever really sat down to watch the State of the Union, either. But at least I know their advice will be brutally honest. So I ask Gabe, who&amp;#039;s a bit of a creative type -- he collects rock-poster artwork, owns thousands of vinyl records, and has a good collection of first-edition hardcovers -- if he could talk with any writers, artists, or musicians, who would he talk to?  He tells me, &amp;quot;I wouldn&amp;#039;t talk to any writers, artists, and musicians! Those would be the last people I would talk to. I would talk to working-class people. People who make 30 to 60K a year.&amp;quot;  Melissa poses the question to Gabe, &amp;quot;But isn&amp;#039;t that biased? Shouldn&amp;#039;t he be talking to all income levels?&amp;quot; &amp;quot;No,&amp;quot; Gabe immediately fires back. &amp;quot;Fuck the rich!&amp;quot; And his reason why: &amp;quot;The rich are doing okay, and if they&amp;#039;re not doing okay, it&amp;#039;s because they were too stupid with their money.&amp;quot;  So it&amp;#039;s decided. I should talk to America. Day 1: Northern California  The last time I saw a few minutes of the State of the Union on TV, I remember being amazed by all the applauding. And I realized that it&amp;#039;s a bit like The Price Is Right, with all the senile congressmen playing the studio audience. &amp;quot;President Bush, come on down!&amp;quot; And members of Congress all applaud, and continue applauding no matter what he says. For example, from the president&amp;#039;s last State of the Union:  A future of hope and opportunity begins with a growing economy -- and that is what we have. . . .[Applause.] Yet one question has surely been settled: that to win the war on terror we must take the fight to the enemy. [Applause.] . . .Yet we can go forward with confidence -- because the state of our union is strong, our cause in the world is right, and tonight that cause goes on. God bless. [Applause.]  But I don&amp;#039;t think most viewers at home applaud during either show. In fact, I remember my brother once yelled, &amp;quot;You idiot! When was the last time you went shopping? During the Depression!&amp;quot; when he was watching The Price Is Right. My parents live in a beige house in the East Bay, so I decide to pay them a visit before setting off. Not because I miss them or want to hang out with them -- I&amp;#039;m not that great of a son -- but because I figure I&amp;#039;ll raid their fridge and watch some cable TV while waiting for the rush-hour traffic to subside.  The two of them went to dinner at the Cheesecake Factory, and when they get home my father sits down at the dinner table and says, &amp;quot;I couldn&amp;#039;t believe it, did you know there&amp;#039;s valet parking at the mall? We went there to the restaurant, and we&amp;#039;re walking up and sure enough this guy in a Corvette pulls up -- to the mall, right?&amp;quot;  My mother interjects, &amp;quot;I think they were going to the restaurant.&amp;quot; &amp;quot;Wherever they were going,&amp;quot; he scoffs, &amp;quot;at the mall? You know -- you walk ten steps and you can park. So they pull up, and there&amp;#039;s a big sign, &amp;quot;Five Dollars Valet Parking&amp;quot; and you have to tip him, too, it&amp;#039;s nuts. People have gone off the deep end. We just walked maybe twenty steps, and this guy is paying five dollars for the privilege to have some young guy park his car.&amp;quot; My mother looks bored as we continue talking, and then my father goes on to tell me all about the recent mortgage foreclosures. I&amp;#039;m thirty-one and I only have one friend who owns property. Everybody else I know, including myself, still rents. So it&amp;#039;s all news to me. I remember sitting down at this very same dinner table during the Clinton years. It was when I was in high school, and it was the most pained I think I&amp;#039;d ever seen my father. He&amp;#039;d come home every day from his Silicon Valley job exhausted. My mother would have dinner prepared on the table, and as soon as my father walked in the door, no matter what we were watching, we had to change the channel over to the nightly news or all hell would break loose. My mother would explain to my father how bad the kids were that day, and he&amp;#039;d just sit there pretending that he was listening and he&amp;#039;d do this moan-and-groan grunt of disgust whenever Bill Clinton was discussed or came up on the television set.  &amp;quot;The state of the union is people are tired of being in Iraq,&amp;quot; my father now tells me, &amp;quot;and they don&amp;#039;t have patience for it, and so we&amp;#039;re getting ready to give the state over to Hillary. The scariest thing I can think of is Hillary becoming president.&amp;quot;  In the Bay Area, there are two football teams, the Raiders and the 49ers, each with different team colors and ideologies. The Raiders might have a piss-poor season, while across the Bay the 49ers may be winning. But no Raiders fan would ever think for a second of switching over to root for the Niners, even if they are Super Bowl\u2013bound. Sometimes I think my father looks at the Grand Old Party like a broken Raiders fan. On the way out I ask my dad if he&amp;#039;s noticed that everything is painted beige now. My friend Pete has this theory that right now, everything in America, all the condos, apartment buildings, strip malls, everything, is all painted from the same four shades of beige, and somehow that creates a numbing effect on everybody. He used the word homogeny a lot when explaining this to me. My dad told me no, that he hadn&amp;#039;t noticed. &amp;quot;Why?&amp;quot; Day 2: San Diego At a trendy bar in San Diego last night I asked this girl sitting alone what she thought of the state of the union. She just rolled her eyes at me and without saying a single word got up from her barstool. Another girl told me straight up that she comes to bars explicitly so she can relax and not discuss things that are unpleasant, such as politics. I got similar reactions in San Francisco before I left, except from this one guy I met a few nights ago at my friend&amp;#039;s apartment. When I asked him how he thought the country was doing, he said, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s fucked!&amp;quot;  Then I asked him how he was doing personally. He told me great. This confused me, so I asked him what he did. He told me his job is to downsize businesses. An example he gave is that he&amp;#039;ll go in, find out who&amp;#039;s doing what, and cut six employees down to two, but the two employees are not part of the original six. Those two are now outsourced.  On our way to the bars that night, the rum shots we&amp;#039;d been doing were circulating throughout my bloodstream, so I asked him -- because it was on my mind -- whether it bothers him that there&amp;#039;s people out there without a job because of him. I forgot what he told me exactly, but essentially it was something about how we all need to eat. Then we drank. I didn&amp;#039;t come across any Homeland Security advisory color charts along the side of Highway 8 between San Diego and Arizona, but my impression is that the security threat is definitely somewhere around red in these parts -- even though there&amp;#039;s hardly anything here. Most of the way I keep getting passed by paddy wagons with Border Patrol and Homeland Security decals on the side looking for border jumpers and Al Qaeda.  When I pull into a gas station to refuel, there are two of these paddy wagons parked behind a blue truck blocking it in and a frustrated Mexican next to it who they are interrogating. He has that same pained look I had on my face earlier when a highway-patrol officer stopped me for speeding, the one that read: You got to be fucking kidding me.  As I am refueling, a third paddy wagon shows up to the scene. When a guy wearing a blue jumpsuit and dark sunglasses gets out, he sees that I am staring and he turns his entire body towards me and stands there with both his hands menacingly on his hips and stares right at me for a very, very long and uncomfortable time. I see him in my rearview mirror, still staring at me, as I pull out onto the highway and away.  Day 3: Arizona Before I left California, I met a Jesuit priest who works as a chaplain at San Quentin. We were standing outside of the prison. It was painted beige. Birds were chirping, you could hear the water, it was all very peaceful. We talked a bit about what he does -- he basically goes around and if the inmates want to talk with him, cool, if not, that&amp;#039;s cool too. But he also told me that inside the prison there are about fifty or so houses where the guards and staff can live. &amp;quot;You saw those schoolchildren?&amp;quot; he asked. &amp;quot;They were going home inside. The school bus drops them off at school outside, but their moms and dads and families live on grounds. It&amp;#039;s a great deal. . . . They&amp;#039;re safe, secure, Marin County, for six hundred bucks a month. That&amp;#039;s a good deal. Mom and Dad walk to work, not bad.&amp;quot;  No, not bad at all. But I got to thinking that it was kind of sad that for most Americans, the only way they could afford to live in Marin County was behind the fence at San Quentin. I wondered if I was looking too deep into this, so I asked him what he thought. &amp;quot;Enclaves,&amp;quot; he said. Then he pointed out to me an old brick building that&amp;#039;s directly across the street and told me that it&amp;#039;s the same vintage as the prison, 1855 or so. &amp;quot;So we&amp;#039;ve come from that&amp;quot; -- the old brick building with an inviting porch outside of it so that people could socialize with others -- and then he pointed across to the condos, which to me looked very similar to the prison, the rooms are boxes, stacked one right on top of the other, but with perhaps a good Internet connection -- &amp;quot;to that.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Where do you want to raise your kids?&amp;quot; he asked. &amp;quot;Here or there?&amp;quot; Then he told me, Go to Arizona, &amp;quot;that&amp;#039;s all you&amp;#039;ll see.&amp;quot;  Well before you make it to Phoenix, that&amp;#039;s all you can see -- planned communities, many gated, on both sides of the street, each one of them with appealing names like Happy or Surprise or Suntime. Every fourth house looks the same, and every house is somewhat new, so that you can be the first family to ever live there. I assume most families move into these communities so that their kids can go to a good school and be in safe environments.  I looked one of these up on the Internet later and here&amp;#039;s what it says: &amp;quot;Trilogy at Vistancia is more than a place. It&amp;#039;s a state of mind, where every day is about vibrant, joyful living in a progressive environment.&amp;quot;  It also goes on to say that the reason Vistancia is so great is that all the homes are built with superiology. If you click on a link, it tells you that superiology is the opposite of inferiology: &amp;quot;the dogged pursuit of mediocrity commonly found among other home builders. ;-)&amp;quot; I don&amp;#039;t think I&amp;#039;d tell the priest this, but if I ever knock a girl up, I&amp;#039;d never want to raise that kid here.  On the way out of Phoenix, I pick up a homeless hitchhiker outside of one of these &amp;quot;enclaves&amp;quot; while a housewife in a minivan looks on and gives me a thumbs-up. Curious if it&amp;#039;s hard to get a ride now from people, he shrugs and tells me that it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;so-so.&amp;quot; I tell him that it&amp;#039;s probably because people are now freaked out about strangers, thanks to television shows like Unsolved Mysteries, Fox News, and America&amp;#039;s Most Wanted. He agrees and tells me all about this trucker who picked up hookers here in Arizona at truck stops, killed them, put their bodies in the back of his truck, and then dumped their bodies in a ditch miles away.  After that, I open up a bag of Cool Ranch Doritos and we share them on the way to Flagstaff. I ask about the state of the union. The hitchhiker says, &amp;quot;I think our country is in pretty sad shape. Our government is what made it bad.&amp;quot; Day 4: New Mexico Shortly after passing the New Mexico border, I pull into a gas station, and since I&amp;#039;m a bit hungry I purchase a microwaveable burrito. While waiting by the microwave I see this gas-station employee meticulously going through every single Slim Jim beef-jerky stick and with a rag wiping the dust off of each and every one, and then placing the Slim Jim back into the box that holds a bunch of them. Since I have about thirty seconds more to go for my burrito, I decide to talk to him. I wonder what he&amp;#039;s thinking. So I ask, &amp;quot;This might be a weird question, but I&amp;#039;m just like curious, how do you think the country&amp;#039;s doing?&amp;quot;  While wiping a Slim Jim, then placing it back into the box, and picking up another to be wiped, he tells me, &amp;quot;Gas prices are up, and umm, other than that, we&amp;#039;re fucked.&amp;quot; Meth must be big around historic Route 66, since every dozen miles or so there seems to be a billboard along the side of the road telling me not to do it.  I pull into a cheap hotel, thirty-eight dollars a night, lots of cockroaches here. At 4:00 A.M. there is a knock on my hotel-room door, but I&amp;#039;m too tired to answer it. I just assume that it&amp;#039;s the tweaker who I had met earlier who asked me if I had an extra lighter so that he could do some &amp;quot;Buddha prayers&amp;quot; in his room.  Days 5 and 6: Texas I never hunted growing up. Not even close. In fact, my mother was so antigun that she wouldn&amp;#039;t even allow us to have squirt guns. The best and worst Christmas gift my brother and I both got when we were little kids were these toddler Army uniforms -- but without the toy guns to go along with them. This highly confused and pissed us off. So I&amp;#039;m a bit weirded out when I pull into a convenience store an hour west of Austin and find that I&amp;#039;m the only one inside who&amp;#039;s not dressed from head to toe in hunting camo, as well as the only individual in line who&amp;#039;s not holding under each arm multiple twelve-packs of American-made beer at 11:00 A.M. When I place my lone energy drink on the counter, I ask the young girl working the register what the hell is going on. While chewing on some gum, she tells me it&amp;#039;s &amp;quot;rifle season.&amp;quot;  Holy fucking shit. Rifles, beer, and deer all mixed together. I&amp;#039;ve driven through downtown Baghdad before and I thought that was scary. But at least those people were sober during &amp;quot;rifle season.&amp;quot;  Before I leave, I take a seat outside on a bench next to a brass spit can that&amp;#039;s used as an ashtray, wondering how come there&amp;#039;s not an armed-forces recruiter sitting down next to me to round these people up and put them into some &amp;quot;real&amp;quot; hunting-camo uniforms. I observe all the 4x4 pickup trucks pulling in and out, and it&amp;#039;s all the same -- each one has a couple ice coolers in the back, and there&amp;#039;s an excitement on all these grown men&amp;#039;s faces like a strip club is offering free lap dances. Just then a pickup truck pulls up and parks, and I swear to God, I overhear the driver, who&amp;#039;s wearing hunting-camo overalls, say to his friend as they walk inside together, &amp;quot;I plan on getting a little buzz goin&amp;#039; on and then goin&amp;#039; out huntin&amp;#039; and then gettin&amp;#039; sumthin&amp;#039; to eat.&amp;quot; I write this down. When they leave the store, I see that the guy who made that particular comment purchased four cases of Bud Light, so I approach him and tell him I&amp;#039;m doing a story on the state of the union, and he tells me, &amp;quot;I go out there and do some huntin&amp;#039;. I don&amp;#039;t go out there and kill nothin&amp;#039;. I just go out there and kill time.&amp;quot; What the fuck is he talking about? I think he was confused with my question, so I ask him again how he thinks the country is doing, and he simply says back to me, &amp;quot;I really wouldn&amp;#039;t know how, to be honest with you. I live my life, and let somebody else worry about it.&amp;quot;  And that was that. He then loads up the beer into one of the coolers in the back of his pickup truck, and I thank him for his time. &amp;quot;You bet.&amp;quot;  When I get to Austin, I begin asking people who a good person to speak with might be. It seems like no matter who I ask, I get the same answer: John Kelso. He&amp;#039;s a columnist at the Austin American-Statesman and some kind of hometown hero.  I track Kelso down the next day near his office and he agrees to have some coffee with me. When we get into his car, I notice several Hawaiian shirts from the cleaners in the backseat. On the way over to a nearby coffee shop I ask about the neighborhood. He tells me that South Congress Avenue (where we&amp;#039;re driving) used to be a real blue-collar area but that they started redeveloping it in the mid-eighties, and now it&amp;#039;s got so many trendy and expensive stores that the people decided to rename it SoCo. &amp;quot;So I put in my column that since they&amp;#039;re running off all the prostitutes on the streets for the remodels, instead of calling it SoCo they should call it NoMoHo.&amp;quot; We both laugh at that, and he tells me that for some reason the name never took off.  After we finally park and walk into the coffee shop, he points out to me the high-end luxury condo being built nearby that&amp;#039;s going to have an indoor dog-poop area up on the tenth story. Then he starts going off on the &amp;quot;higher level of asshole-i-ness these days.&amp;quot; He tells me that when he first moved here in 1976, it was considered the mark of a Yankee to honk your horn. &amp;quot;The only reason to honk your horn was if somebody was about to run into you. Now, if you sit for 0.18 seconds past the time the light turns green, you get some asshole honking his horn.&amp;quot;  My wheels are turning, and I&amp;#039;m wondering if maybe Mr. Kelso just nailed the state of the union himself, when he almost immediately starts telling me about the subject of one of his recent columns -- this couple that saves money and gas by rowboating to work across Lake Travis instead of driving. &amp;quot;If they drive around on the bridges in their car, it&amp;#039;s about 140 miles round-trip. If they row across the lake, which takes about ten minutes on a good day, twenty minutes when it&amp;#039;s windy, they can knock off a hundred miles of driving. . . . Plus there&amp;#039;s the beauty of going across the lake and maybe skinny-dipping on the way back -- this kind of shit, right? That&amp;#039;s all the column was about. Well, the reaction to this column was two or three people called to complain that they weren&amp;#039;t wearing their life preservers.&amp;quot; We both laugh out loud at the absurdity of that. &amp;quot;So that&amp;#039;s part of the problem with the country,&amp;quot; he says. &amp;quot;Everybody is looking for something to bitch about, and there really doesn&amp;#039;t make a bit of fucking difference, you know?&amp;quot; Day 8: Wichita, Kansas By the time I make it to Wichita, I&amp;#039;ve been on the road for a week and I&amp;#039;ve purchased so much crap along the way -- bolo tie, rusty Texas lone star, Day of the Dead artwork, an old Underwood typewriter, fridge magnets, vintage clothing -- that I need a suitcase. So I walk into a thrift store downtown to score one. I like thrift stores because you can find vintage clothing where the label or brand name is located somewhere on the inside, rather than plastered all over the outside. In back there&amp;#039;s a senior citizen holding an old AM/FM radio in one hand and a used American flag in the other. Now that September 12 is so seven years ago, it seems like every time I walk into a thrift store or Salvation Army -- no matter what state or city I&amp;#039;m in -- I always see a couple of them for sale, but I&amp;#039;ve never actually seen a person purchasing one. He tells me that where he lives he goes through a lot of them, because it&amp;#039;s a bit windy.  The only thing I really know about this part of Kansas is an article I came across mentioning that there&amp;#039;s a lot of religious radicals here -- the &amp;quot;God hates fags&amp;quot; people are from around here, and that controversial abortion doctor George Tiller, etc. So after buying the suitcase, I stop in a coffee shop to ask about the churches and overall scene here. One girl who works there jokingly tells me, &amp;quot;There&amp;#039;s as many churches as bars here,&amp;quot; and there&amp;#039;s nothing to do but &amp;quot;go to church and drink.&amp;quot; Which makes me believe that I could perhaps become religious here, and this artist in there tells me all about how the art scene in Wichita is &amp;quot;booming&amp;quot; right now.  Just then a camera crew walks in the front door. When the camerawoman approaches our table, the manager of the place approaches the artist that I am chatting with and says, &amp;quot;Remember, you work here!&amp;quot;  But I don&amp;#039;t, and since I&amp;#039;m a media whore, I tell her I&amp;#039;d be more than happy to talk with her. So with a camera shoved in my face and while I&amp;#039;m smoking a cigarette, she asks me what I think about the proposed smoking ban in Wichita. I say something about how I live in San Francisco and am just traveling through, and that I like to come to places like this because &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s a breath of fresh air&amp;quot; for me to come to other states that allow people to smoke, since I like to smoke and drink at the same time.  And then I leave to go find some Christians. The Lord&amp;#039;s Diner is a church-run soup kitchen in downtown Wichita. The entrance has a sign warning people that guns are not allowed inside. When I walk inside, I meet Mrs. Glick, who&amp;#039;s like the head lady, and she tells me: &amp;quot;We operate every night of the year, from 5:30 to 7:30, and we serve, no questions asked.&amp;quot; At 5:30 there&amp;#039;s already a good line going around the building for the Lord&amp;#039;s Diner, and by 6:00 every single chair inside is taken. A lot of the people here look like they buy lottery tickets, like they look at eighty-million-to-one odds as a hell of a lot better than what they&amp;#039;ve got.  Looking around I notice that a lot of people are wearing clothing with American flags on them, like the one guy with an American-flag do-rag and the black guy with a leather jacket with an American flag on the back of it, and it occurs to me that so far, a lot of the places that I go that probably need the most help from the country tend to be the places where I end up seeing a lot of our flag, like this Indian reservation I stopped by near Albuquerque and the homeless shelter I visited in Tulsa.  To be honest, I was a bit nervous about what I might be getting myself into here. The day before, a bail bondsman in Tulsa went off on me about how the apocalypse was coming. But the people here are really nice and the food is better than expected. But what really makes this dining experience such a pleasure is that the Bible isn&amp;#039;t shoved down my throat while I am trying to eat. They just let everybody be.  This was really cool and reminded me of this guy I met at a bar near my apartment a few months ago. He said that he was part of what is called the Night Ministry, a small group of ordained ministers who walk around San Francisco at night and just talk to people on the street if they need somebody to talk to.  I rolled with him for a while. Honestly, I was expecting people to harass the shit out of him. But instead the complete opposite happened. Everywhere we went crackheads, junkies, and street people constantly came up to him asking for his blessing and/or a prayer. I was amazed not just about how many people on the streets believed in God, but how they all treated the minister with respect.  Some people might not think that the people back home in San Francisco have much in common with those in Wichita. But I think they might. Especially those who are having trouble.  Day 10: Chicago Even though Gabe warned me against talking to anyone who works in a suit, I decided to do so anyway, just because his advice to me is not always correct (e.g., John Kelso -- a writer). Sitting at a table in the bar area of this pricey steakhouse in Chicago is an enormous businessman wearing a pinstripe suit and casually smoking a cigar, and sitting with him is another suit who kind of looks like David Duke. The guy in pinstripes tells me that he&amp;#039;s a CEO of an Internet-video company, which automatically makes me think of porn. I ask if I can chat with him for a bit, and his buddy tells me, &amp;quot;Everything that you record is fact of the matter and the truth.&amp;quot;  So as a blues saxophone is playing in the background and forks clatter against plates of expensive steak, I ask about the state of the union. &amp;quot;Wow,&amp;quot; the big guy in the pinstripes answers as he takes a drag from his cigar. &amp;quot;I think, on the outside looking in, it&amp;#039;s sort of like you had a car or a house that was completely paid for six or seven or eight years ago, and you took out seven or eight or nine mortgages on it.&amp;quot; Then he mentions things about artificial inflation, greenbacks, and the Chinese, who apparently own our greenbacks.  As his cigar slowly continues to burn and the blues saxophone continues into a long drawn-out solo, he continues his own drawn-out solo: &amp;quot;Peter has someday got to pay Paul, and we&amp;#039;re not doing that, you know. This country needs to peel back its layers and get back to responsible thinking.  &amp;quot;You know, the joke was you look at the trillions of dollars that we&amp;#039;ve spent on this war -- that was on lies [for added emphasis he slams his enormous fist on the table, thump!] -- and you take a hundred of the top markets in this country -- I don&amp;#039;t know how many trillions we&amp;#039;ve spent on this war, over ten trillion, wasn&amp;#039;t it?&amp;quot; No, I don&amp;#039;t know, honestly. Not about how much we&amp;#039;ve spent on the war or Peter or Paul or artificial inflation. I&amp;#039;m not really paying attention to what he&amp;#039;s saying anymore, so I just shrug and continue nodding my head.  When I ask the other suit how he feels, he starts to get on my nerves. Instead of answering the question or talking with me about it, he keeps on asking me these really annoying questions like, &amp;quot;Do you have a business card? Are you on the payroll? Are they paying for your expenses?&amp;quot; It&amp;#039;s like, why not just straight up ask me how much money I make? I nearly lose it when he sizes me up and asks, &amp;quot;Where&amp;#039;d you go to college?&amp;quot; Which, again, is another one of those how-much-money-do-you-make questions. When I tell him that I didn&amp;#039;t, that perplexes him, and he looks away. And then asks me how I got into writing, and so I tell him, &amp;quot;I joined the Army, and I went to Iraq and started writing.&amp;quot; His friend, the guy smoking a cigar and telling me that the war&amp;#039;s all bullshit, immediately feels retarded and says, &amp;quot;Look, I just want you to know that I support the troops. We all do, but I&amp;#039;m against the war.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;Of course.&amp;quot; Here&amp;#039;s another &amp;quot;of course&amp;quot; that I&amp;#039;ve noticed, but that I didn&amp;#039;t tell the suits: It seems like a lot of people I speak to who are against the war think that withdrawing from Iraq will fix everything. So they&amp;#039;re now blaming the war for everything that&amp;#039;s wrong with America. Day 11: Ann Arbor and Detroit, Michigan Since every single hotel in Ann Arbor is booked the night before the big game against Ohio State, my plan is to get into a frat party, get totally wasted, and then pass out on a sofa -- so wasted that even if they wanted to wake me up and kick me out, they couldn&amp;#039;t. There&amp;#039;d be a potential that I&amp;#039;d wake up in the morning with &amp;quot;I Love Cock&amp;quot; written across my forehead with a Sharpie, but it beats sleeping in my car again, since it is freezing cold. I set out on foot down fraternity row passing by all the men and women of military-enlistment age who smell like school spirit, some armed with beer bongs, some on cell phones communicating party locations, some barely able to stand without assistance from drunk co-students.  On the front lawn of one frat house is a beat-up red car spray-painted with anti-Ohio graffiti, Fast Times at Ridgemont High style. A frat boy from a second-story window sticks his head out with a keg cup and yells, &amp;quot;Let&amp;#039;s Go Blue!!!&amp;quot; Everybody cheers and they all go into singing the school fight song together. So I walk past the car and approach the door. But when I get to the pencil neck working the door, he puts his hands up and stops me and asks me a question that I didn&amp;#039;t see him ask anybody else: &amp;quot;Excuse me, do you know anybody here?&amp;quot; He then tells me that I have to know somebody to get in. I&amp;#039;m one step away from telling him I&amp;#039;m a veteran, but that&amp;#039;s pathetic. Instead I take a look around and notice that all the people here are like twelve years old.  So I thank him and leave, and that night I freeze my ass off in my car, and the next morning go to the game.  Circling up above are a couple propeller airplanes dragging banners, one advertising a local strip club, the other an adult-toy store by the airport, and what&amp;#039;s ironic is that every single white boy here yelling, &amp;quot;Fuck Ohio!&amp;quot; looks like a white boy from Ohio. I also notice that most of the die-hard fans here look like they&amp;#039;ve never played a down of football in their lives -- kind of like how the people who are the most supportive of war have never been to war.  I&amp;#039;m wearing a Brooklyn Dodgers hat, which I&amp;#039;m thinking about ditching, because it seems like everybody here thinks it&amp;#039;s a blue Red Sox cap -- like the drunk Michigan fan who yells in my ear, &amp;quot;B-town baby! You know it!&amp;quot; and the lady with her son who points at my hat and asks if I&amp;#039;m from Boston. I tell her, &amp;quot;No, I&amp;#039;m just a Jackie Robinson fan,&amp;quot; and she tells me that she and her son are from Boston, they drove all the way here for this game. Her father took her to this game years back when she was a kid, and now she&amp;#039;s taking her son, and this is his first game. He looks psyched.  As she tells me this, I see that there&amp;#039;s a sticker on the side of a nearby trash can that reads, &amp;quot;Looking for a job in sports?&amp;quot; And it gives a Web-site address, dreamsportsjobs.com, where you can get that dream job, and there&amp;#039;s this black lady with a metal shopping cart next to it putting all the beer cans and empty bottles into it. It&amp;#039;s 10:00 A.M., and her cart is nearly overflowing with all the empties, and people are constantly coming up and dumping their empties into that trash can at a much faster rate than she can put in her cart. I thank the lady from Boston and make my way to the lady who&amp;#039;s working the dream job in sports and ask her about the state of the union. With all the hoopla and whoop-de-do going on all around us, she has to yell to me, &amp;quot;Well, I think if it wasn&amp;#039;t for the war, we&amp;#039;d be doin&amp;#039; pretty good.&amp;quot;  Just then, these Michigan fans standing nearby see that I&amp;#039;m talking with her. They&amp;#039;re drunk, and they come over and interrupt by asking the lady if they can have their photo taken with her. They want me included in the photo, but I decline. I step back and watch. She&amp;#039;s a good sport about it. They take several photos and they all smile with her and thank her, and then they go back to emptying more beer cans to put into the trash cans. &amp;quot;We&amp;#039;re in a lot of crisis,&amp;quot; again she has to continue to yell this to me, because right now there&amp;#039;s some yahoo nearby playing a bagpipe. &amp;quot;This country&amp;#039;s headed towards poverty,&amp;quot; she says. &amp;quot;But they can stop it if they want to.&amp;quot; Do you think we&amp;#039;ll stop it?  &amp;quot;Yes!&amp;quot; she exclaims. &amp;quot;As soon as the war stops, we&amp;#039;ll stop it. As soon as the war lets down, everybody will be back in stride.&amp;quot; With that said, a Michigan fan walks by hitting a cowbell with a drumstick, and after each time he does this, people yell, &amp;quot;Go Blue!&amp;quot; According to my friend who grew up in Detroit, black bowling leagues are huge here. And on the freeway toward downtown, I pass three or four bowling alleys in quick succession. Even though most of the signs I see are hand-painted and the stores are mom-and-pops instead of chains, the neighborhood doesn&amp;#039;t look so bad. So I ask a guy loading groceries into the back of a van where the rough part of town is. He gives me a confused look, like, Dude, you&amp;#039;re in Detroit -- WTF? I then explain to him that I&amp;#039;m doing a story, and he points me in the right direction and tells me to go that way for a couple miles and that I&amp;#039;ll find it.  After passing by an angry youth dragging a baseball bat, I park and press the lock button on the key chain -- twice. Then I begin to explore the neighborhood. It seems like every other house around these parts was burned down, either completely or partially. One of the houses that I check out that was all burned and boarded up has a sign outside of it in all caps that says: WHY NOT &amp;quot;Deploy 20,000 Troops to Protect Our Own Children.&amp;quot; I&amp;#039;m assuming this is in regards to the troop surge in Iraq. Next to this sign is an American flag.  The next house I check out is a two-story and it is the same inside -- gutted with random crap spread out and litter and human feces all over. But when I step inside this one, I hear some rustling coming up above from the second floor. Somebody is upstairs, so I yell out, &amp;quot;Hey, is it cool if I come up there?&amp;quot; A female voice yells back, &amp;quot;Sure.&amp;quot; So I do. The stairway is burned and missing steps, and when I get to the second floor, she removes her right glove as we shake hands hello, and I ask her what she is doing. She tells me that she is just rummaging through the garbage -- that she finds a lot of stuff here in these burned-down houses and that she takes a lot of the stuff that she finds down to Goodwill, so that it can be donated to people who need it. She&amp;#039;s lived in Detroit every day of her life and has &amp;quot;never even been to Canada.&amp;quot;  When I ask her why there are so many bombed-out buildings here in D-town, she tells me it&amp;#039;s because &amp;quot;they won&amp;#039;t fix it.&amp;quot; She goes on to tell me that she scavenges a lot in these houses and that one day she saw this guy run out of the house across the street with a sliced-up baby. &amp;quot;He had cut the baby from her neck to the asshole and he walked straight down this street -- okay? He started running with the baby. I followed him, because I be tripping, Nah, this can&amp;#039;t be real, you know? Maybe that&amp;#039;s a dog? I grabbed him from the back, his arm, and tried to turn him around and he hit me. He knocked the shit outta me. But it was a real baby. He took off running and the police came and he was talking all about how I had to kill her, the world is corrupt, and all that.&amp;quot; And with disgust, she tells me, &amp;quot;And you never heard nothing about it.&amp;quot;  Detroit is starting to sound to me like the New Orleans of the Great Lakes area. Then she tells me that bodies of females are often found in these burned-up houses, and that in this very house &amp;quot;they found two kids, I think about two or three weeks ago, in this very house, tied up in this very house, tied up in the basement.&amp;quot;  Before checking out the basement, I ask her about the state of the union. She thinks about it for a second and while leaning up against the wall she tells me, &amp;quot;On a scale from one to ten, I give it about a seven.&amp;quot;  Day 12: Washington, D. C. When I get to D. C., I park my car and make my way over to the old Wilson Center, where a lot of legendary D. C. hardcore bands from the early eighties played. I remember reading somewhere that the neighborhood around here used to be really rough, but you wouldn&amp;#039;t get that impression now from the chain-link construction and beige condos. It seems like everywhere I go, people use the word gentrified when talking about a neighborhood. I swear to God, everywhere is becoming gentrified. The only place I didn&amp;#039;t really see or hear people using that word was when I was in downtown Detroit and Mosul, Iraq. That&amp;#039;s it. I don&amp;#039;t know if that&amp;#039;s a good or bad thing. But it&amp;#039;s true. I go to see the Evens that night. The show costs five dollars, and they ask people to bring a canned-food item to be donated to some homeless organization. I go to Rite Aid and buy the cheapest thing they have, a can of mixed veggies for sixty-nine cents. I stand in the back next to a table with various pamphlets on homelessness, racism, etc. I stand next to it the whole evening and I don&amp;#039;t see a single person pick up one of those flyers and take it home. Day 14: Lowell, Massachusetts When I go and check out the city library in Lowell, Mass., I ask a librarian about the state of the union and she tells me that &amp;quot;it&amp;#039;s going great.&amp;quot; I cut her off and say thank you. &amp;quot;But, the war . . .&amp;quot; Thank you, I again tell her, thinking to myself, Of course -- the war, and exit the library.  She probably thinks I ended the interview short because she said it was great, but I ended it because I was way over my quota on positive state-of-the-union sound bites, as well as way maxed out over my quota for antiwar sound bites. Not that I really have quotas for either. But it seems like we&amp;#039;re either doing great (America is strong) or damned (stop the war). Or both. In three words or less. Day 15: Bangor, Maine The airport that I&amp;#039;m flying home from in Bangor, Maine, has a hotel connected to it. When I ask the lady behind the counter how much it will be for a room, she gives me a price, which sounds a bit steep, so I ask about a military discount. She tells me that it&amp;#039;s only available for active duty. I tell her that&amp;#039;s fine and quickly slip in a &amp;quot;That&amp;#039;s how we treat our veterans&amp;quot; and ask about other hotels in the area that are a bit more reasonably priced. She tells me of a couple, and then feeling guilty decides to hook me up with the military-discount rate -- tells me her husband&amp;#039;s a vet and she knows how it is. There&amp;#039;s a place downtown called the New Waverly Restaurant. Everyone is drinking the same cocktail. When I ask the bartender what&amp;#039;s up, he points to an article taped up on the wall with the headline, THE CHAMPAGNE OF MAINE and asks if I&amp;#039;d like to try one. I tell him sure.  After he makes me a sample of it -- tastes a bit like a poor man&amp;#039;s Kahl\u02D9a -- I tell him I&amp;#039;ll take one, and while making me one (just cheap-ass coffee-flavored brandy and milk) he tells me that it&amp;#039;s called a Sombrero but there&amp;#039;s many other popular names for it, such as, Fat Ass in a Glass, Brown Cow, Fish Chowder, Gorilla Juice.  There&amp;#039;s this Maine-i-ac next to me who has one of these beigeish drinks in his hand. He&amp;#039;s totally wasted and can hardly speak since he&amp;#039;s so drunk, and he&amp;#039;s constantly telling me of another name for the drink, which I keep on hearing as &amp;quot;Lake&amp;#039;s brother.&amp;quot;  But then when I listen more closely to what he&amp;#039;s saying, I find out he&amp;#039;s telling me that the drink is called Leg Spreader. Lovely. I then decide to have a few more since another individual tells me that there&amp;#039;s an urban myth that 90 percent of all crimes here involve this drink and I want to see if that&amp;#039;s true or not.  After that I decide to head to the Ramada for ladies&amp;#039; night at Barnaby&amp;#039;s, which I&amp;#039;m told is where all the action is. It&amp;#039;s pretty much a banquet room at the hotel converted to a nightclub. The DJ is an old guy with white hair, there&amp;#039;s a disco ball in the center, and, of course, like a high school dance, all the horny men looking like sexual predators on the outside. There&amp;#039;s this girl full-on giving a nasty lap dance, a Justin Timberlake wannabe bringing sexy back all by himself, and the place is packed -- and nearly every single girl here is completely wasted. For me, this would be the first time I&amp;#039;ve ever gone somewhere and every single girl seems to be not only wasted, but way more wasted than I am.  I&amp;#039;m going ballistic in my journal, writing this all down, when a girl comes up to me (wasted) and asks what I&amp;#039;m doing. I tell her I&amp;#039;m writing a story about the state of the union, and just when I&amp;#039;m about to ask her thoughts, her friend (also wasted, but not quite as much) boosts my ego by grabbing her by the arm and instructing her, &amp;quot;Don&amp;#039;t talk to him -- there&amp;#039;s way better.&amp;quot; She throws me a drunken smile as if to say sorry, then the two of them go and mingle with some way betters.  I feel awkward, so I go back to the hotel. But it isn&amp;#039;t just her comment. It&amp;#039;s everything. If this assignment had been asking people about their favorite YouTube video, I&amp;#039;m sure they would have talked forever. Instead, I always just feel like an asshole. I&amp;#039;ve been to the Bangor airport before. It&amp;#039;s the port that many of the soldiers sent off to fight in Iraq or Afghanistan pass through on their way to and from the combat zones. There&amp;#039;s this group of people from Maine who meet every single plane that lands. According to the board up on the wall, to date, 546,109 troops have passed through this airport. When I mention to the head greeter, Mr. Knight, something about how 540,000 kids have rolled through here, he sternly corrects me, &amp;quot;They ain&amp;#039;t kids! They&amp;#039;re men!&amp;quot;  When I say how a lot of them are eighteen-year-old kids, he tells me, &amp;quot;I know, but they&amp;#039;re still men! They&amp;#039;re doing a man&amp;#039;s job!&amp;quot;  Okay, I guess female soldiers aren&amp;#039;t girls either, they&amp;#039;re now women? Or are they men since they&amp;#039;re doing a man&amp;#039;s job?  I don&amp;#039;t ask that question, but I do ask him what he thinks about the state of the union since he&amp;#039;s experienced World War II and has seen all these &amp;quot;men&amp;quot; pass by here. He tells me, &amp;quot;I think we&amp;#039;re on the right track. I want to see them finish it. I don&amp;#039;t want to see them pull out of there like they did out of Desert Storm. If they would have finished it then, we wouldn&amp;#039;t be there now. So that&amp;#039;s the way I look at it.&amp;quot;  A few steps away there&amp;#039;s a couple both wearing World War II hats, so I say hello to them and ask what they think about the war. &amp;quot;I don&amp;#039;t know what the outcome will be -- in the end will it be worth it or not? I don&amp;#039;t know if anything is worth killing three or four thousand troops.&amp;quot;  &amp;quot;And Iraqis, too!&amp;quot; His wife throws in.  He then explains to me that in World War II everybody participated. It wasn&amp;#039;t just the people in the military, it was everybody, and he motions with his hands to the people in the airport lobby waiting for their flights and tells me that for everybody else, &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s life goes on as usual.&amp;quot;  Frustrated with that he ends by saying, &amp;quot;Anyways, I think things can be a lot better. Maybe after next year it will be.&amp;quot; Maybe. Maybe not. At last, the &amp;quot;grunt battalion&amp;quot; of marines arrives. The energy in the terminal immediately rises. The Greatest Generation gets in formation. The local teenagers and well-wishers fall into place. The marines have spent the last seven months in Iraq, they look exhausted, and when they walk down the hallway, people cheer, flags are waved, camera flashes go off, hands are shaken, backs are patted, and the Key Club from the local high school sings &amp;quot;God Bless America.&amp;quot;  I stick around for a bit, but I don&amp;#039;t talk to anyone. Soon the marines get back on the plane to fly back to their base. The troop greeters all slowly dissipate and disappear as well, and the only people here at this airport are the ones about to jump on a plane to get to wherever they need to be. It&amp;#039;s back to normal again, and life goes on.  Back to where everything is black and white and painted in four shades of beige. (Applause.) "^^<http://www.w3.org/2001/XMLSchema#string>
<http://www.esquire.com/news-politics/a4104/state-of-the-union-0208/>