22 May 2005
Rob Bingaman
If you’re lucky, not very many people know all your life’s most embarrassing moments. If you’re lucky, at least one does. I’ve known Rob since I was at least six years old, probably younger. From kindergarten to manhood, he’s witnessed, heard or repeated more of the stories that I wish I could forget. Sometimes I wish he didn’t have such a great memory.
Even though we didn’t really become friends until high school, I owe more to Rob than any other friend. We went from snotty immature teenagers to snotty immature men together, and managed to make it through without hating each other. In fact, far from it. Somehow, I have more respect for the guy who punched me in the eye on the playground (and who still makes a hobby of making fun of me in public) than just about anybody I know. Go figure.
Please state your full name for the record: Robert Josiah Bingaman Sr.
Occupation(s) (both real and desired in-another-lifetime):
I’ve been a student and an artist for most of my life. I only hope that I can say the same the day I die. However, I’m not opposed to cooking, driving cattle, being the President, or simply skipping to the high-dollar lecture circuit.
What do you do all day?
That’s a question I get a lot, mostly from myself. Life is pretty short, so I try not to sleep too much. I spend a lot of time reading, and even more time watching. With the time that’s left I daydream about pretty girls, write, paint, and spoil my dinner. It’s pretty rough.
What are your favorite movies?
There are many. Visual anthems include Mallick’s Badlands and Days of Heaven, the entire oeuvre of John Ford and Sergio Leone, Antonioni’s L’Avventura, Godard’s Contempt, Bergman’s Faith Trilogy, everything Wes Anderson touches, anything with Clint Eastwood or John Wayne, The Natural, Stranger than Paradise, and Top Gun.
What are your favorite books?
I guess my mind stopped developing a decade ago, when I was in ninth grade, because James Joyce, Earnest Hemingway and J.D. Salinger are still my verbal mentors. From them I’ll stray to Gabriel Garcia Marquez, Octavio Paz, or Annie Proulx. With non-fiction, my interests are more a reflection of modes of thought and subject matter than individual authors. More historical biographies are being written about things, such as electricity, steel, or cod — and it’s an addictive stream of truth. Stuff you didn’t realize you needed to read until you read it. My new bedside companions are Barry Lopez, Joan Didion, Thomas Friedman, or a good newspaper.
What’s your favorite music?
When I’m not playing Bob Dylan or Richard Wagner, you might hear Hank Williams, Philip Glass, Johnny Cash, Wilco, Spoon, The Walkmen, Woody Guthrie, BRMC, ELO, EMF, British Sea Power, Elton John, Electrelane or Ben Folds. Yo La Tengo, Fiery Furnaces, and Tchaikovsky are also on a near-daily rotation. But the truth is, Mandy Moore’s the only thing I listen to alone.
What’s your favorite color?
White. It isn’t the new black, it’s the old one. It’s the absence and the presence — the paradox, and more. The only color you don’t get sick of it, cause you were sick of it the day you were born. In the beginning, there was darkness. But it was a white darkness, like a blank canvas without a light. White is the color of absolute potential, of everything I’ll never paint, but could. Maybe.
What makes you laugh?
That’s a good question. I don’t laugh enough. I don’t give friends courtesy laughs, and it isn’t a nervous habit. Without sounding like the cheesiest guy this side of the Mississippi, the laughter of people I love invariably gets me to laugh with them. Yesterday I was on the phone with someone I haven’t spoken with in a couple months, but there’s a lot between us. Her and I laughed without great reasons the entire time, usually just because the other was. If you were to ask me why I was laughing, I’d say because she was, but not just anyone’s laughter has the same result. So what was it really? Love I guess. Whiskey works too.
How did we meet?
Of all that I can remember, I don’t recall the moment you and I first met. It is certain that we were quite young, kindergartners probably, and that our first encounter took place on a short yellow bus driven by a black man named Frank. That I don’t remember the day points to the understandable probability that I wasn’t very impressed with the event. You did a lot of talking down to me in those years—it’s funny, most people who know us now think of you as the nice guy. But man, if they could have heard the eight-year-old you telling me why I’m stupid, they’d think different. That’s how we met, but not how we became friends.
We weren’t friends till some ten years later, when your secret girlfriend started hitting on me right in front of you, and I started dating the girl your best friend was obsessed with. Somehow, we hit it off.
What’s the most embarrassing story you can think of about me?
If it isn’t you kissing and licking your imaginary girlfriend on the bus, or you bringing a medieval sword to school and pretending everyone was a character in your favorite romance novel, then it must be the time you copied Nirvana lyrics word-for-word for an eighth grade poetry contest and got caught.
Now that Congress is going to make baseball illegal, what is America’s pastime?
Baseball will always be our National Game, however at some point, someone will need to announce that we officially lost the War on Drugs. Shouting on televsion, being fat, legislating two verses in the Bible, political correctness, the War on Arabs, and chronic laziness are also soaring through the ranks. Clairvoyant that I am, I can happily announce that soccer will always be gay, third-world, and played by guys named Serge with way too much confidence. Problem is, our borders are so loose, this awful “sport” may one day share the stage with baseball.
Define “modern art” in 10 words or less.
It’s very post-modern of me to completely ignore your rule isn’t it? You and I once got in a fight about this, because you didn’t understand what modern meant in its most appropriate sense (there are several). Without writing an essay, or convincing your few remaining readers that I’m Trump without the money, the point was (and is), that suburban women need to stop calling anything that isn’t covered in floral patterns modern. That’s all.
Why did you stop punching me all the time?
I’d love to chalk it up to some humble series of lessons that have resulted in my own adult maturity, but the truth involves nothing more than proximity — you aren’t around me as much as you used to be. We never actually grow up anyway, some of us just act like it (read: political correctness). That’s boring as hell, and indicative of a terrible sense of humor.
You were probably expecting me to get deep about my newfound pacifism, but I think there is some confusion about that. You see, I love violence (it’s so dynamic and expressive), just not killing (especially for things like oil and democracy in the Middle East). I’ll be sure to punch you a few times this weekend to show you what I mean.