Bryson "Bayless" Parsley

So I have this next door neighbor, her name is Ezra. Ezra moved in maybe two, two and a half months ago. Not sure exactly. But it doesn't matter. The only point in you knowing that is so that you recognize a simple fact: Ezra has lived next door to me for some time.

The first month or so, she called me Bayless. Then, for reasons completly unbeknownst to me, she switched to calling me Bryson. I wrote about this a while back. This is the update.

"Hi, Bryson," she said with utmost sincerity and kindness, again, about two days ago. Ezra always, always smiles at me when she says hello, and it comes across as a real smile, not some "Hiiiiiii, Bryyyyyyson!" smile. I was happy to hear this the other day because it showed that Ezra's friend had kept the secret that I asked her to keep. I want to see how long this can last.

Here is the game:

From now on, whenever Ezra is around, my neighbors have been instructed to address me as Bryson. Without exception.

But what happens when inevitably she hears someone slip up and call you Bayless?

Easy: "Oh, yeah, Bayless is actually my nickname. I don't even remember how I got it; it's what my mom used to call me when I was little. Yeah, most people call me Bryson, but a few do use Bayless."

Boom. It's funny because it could last my entire lifetime. And I would be prepared to go along with this story until the end of it.

Some of us have to work for a living.

There was a piece of white computer paper taped to my front door two days ago when I got home from work. The last time I saw a piece of white computer paper taped to that door when I got home from work, it was a notice of if-you-don't-pay-me-a.s.a.p.-you're-evicted. So I don't like seeing pieces of paper taped to my door when I get home from work.

I hopped off my bike, still panting, and rolled my baby -- also known as my sweet road bike -- down my front porch, which is lined with wall-to-wall free Craiglist seating (a 12-foot church pew and a classy, blue diner booth bench), and up to the front door, and the white piece of paper.

"What will it be this time..."

Okay, so I don't get it: I don't pay a single gas bill yet, in four months of living here, and they're gonna tell me now that a debt collection agency is after me? I thought gas was ... was .... free! I swear!

"Shit..."

Then I read the note.

It was just a warning to all residents that the water would be turned off sometime the next day for sewage repairs.

"Nice!"

Free gas is the only way to go.

My neighbor Alex came outside about ten minutes later, and I brought up the water cuts. By that time, I noticed that pieces of white paper had been plastered atop every door in the entire compound.

"Yeah," he said, in the most Wisconsin/Michigan accent you're going to find in these parts. Alex is as laid back as they come, too, and he speaks like it. "Better make sure you get your shower in tomorrow before 10."

Before what time?

"Before what time?" I asked. "Do you really wake up at 10?"

"Yeah man." Alex was standing in the parking lot next to Carl, (or is it Karl? Hmm. Not sure. He's from Sweden), who I see every morning as he gets in his car to go to work (he still doesn't know my name, and calls he "bro" or "brother"), while I'm having coffee on the diner bench, reading work emails.

"Dude," I said, "some of us have to work for a living!"

I had been waiting my entire life to deliver that line. And now, just like when I got filmed today for a Gatti's Pizza commercial singing their little ditty for the camera, I can cross yet another thing off of my life's list.

"And the ROCKETS RED GLAAAAAARE!"

(The bombs bursting in aaaaiiiiir!)

(Gave proooooof, through the niiiiiight, that our chances are still there.)

I don't have a TV. That's not entirely true. I do have a TV. But I don't have cable. So I can't watch my TV.

I do have the Internet though, and I just found out that I can watch pretty much anything I want on a live stream through www.justin.tv, which is why I am sitting out on my front porch right now, facing the parking lot of my little compound here in Austin, a town chock full of hippies, recycling bins and granola, as I watch the Rockets put the finishing touches on a must win Game 6 against L.A.

Then, there is Lindsey, my nice, soft-spoken neighbor, who has taken it upon herself to personally stop by and ruin my buzz.

"Hey, Bayless." Lindsey is the type of person who will greet you, and then stand there, with a slightly deranged, crooked, yet harmless smile on her face. She will stand there until you greet her back. No matter how long it takes.

"Hey," I say, hardly averting my eyes from the screen of my laptop long enough to even register her presence. "I'm watching the NBA Playoffs right now."

Lindsey is an Austin artist, which is a pretty standard description of the types of people that live in this town. Artists, musicians and people who know how to assemble bikes: these are the three subsets of humanity that make up about 98 percent of the populace in the Texas capital. Most of these people, as you could probably guess, do not watch the NBA Playoffs.

"Sports?" she asks, as Luis Scola picks up a huge rebound off the Battier miss, and puts it back in for two. Houston tore out of the gates, just like the last time we played at Toyota Center, in a Game 4 blowout that evened this second round Western Conference series at two. After starting tonight's elimination game on a 21-3 tear -- we came into Game 6 down 3-2 after L.A. answered our beatdown with a beatdown of their own at Staples Center -- the Lakers have crawled back in it, mounting a furious third quarter comeback to cut the lead to a single bucket. But we're still hanging on. And I'm trying to focus. "Don't you think sports are just a way to distract us, to make us think that life is all just a big competition?"

No, I was tempted to answer. I think unathletic hippies are a distraction. But she is a nice girl, the type, though, that states with 100 percent certainty and not a shred of evidence that George Bush planned 9/11, and I know she's not ready for a real conversation on this issue, at least not with me. It'd be like a dad actually taking his six year old to the hoop and then feeling like a big man about it afterwards.

"Uhh..." I thought of how I could answer her question without being a complete dick, and finally decided upon, "Well, it is a competition, Lindsey."

Sports, and life. Both are a competition. We can help each other out here and there -- I open doors for people, and say please and thank you, and I try to tip people whenever there is a tip jar -- but like Pearl Jam screams, "It's evolution, baby."

"Sports are just, like ... nationalism," she said. Deep, I know. This is Austin. "It's just a way for people to prepare for war, and conflict, and..."

"GET THE BALL, SCOLA! GET IT!"

Look how angry Luis looks ... must be because he's wearing his Argentine national team jersey

She flinched momentarily. I don't think Lindsey knows how to scream like that. It's how someone would scream in like, a war.

"Why can't we as a culture focus on cooperation, and not try to be competing all the time?" she asked. Why not just go ahead and ask what the meaning of life is? I'm sure the next time I'm clearly focused on something else she'll pose that one for me -- maybe when I'm changing a light bulb, or vacuuming.

"I don't know," I mumble, pumping my fist as Aaron Brooks takes it to the rack for two.

I had pretty much the exact same conversation once with a girl who I was trying to hook up with while I was in college, when she tagged along with me and my friends to a Virginia-Florida State basketball game. A girl I'm trying to get with will get more of a pass to spout off anti-sports propaganda like that; a girl I'm not trying to hook up with, however, will get served.

"Lindsey, you don't know what you're talking about."

I could see her lingering, right below the railing on my porch. But I wasn't focusing on her.

"I just think sports are all about ... nationalism."

"Lindsey," I said, with a voice as monotone as Stanley's, "You have never even played sports. You don't know what you're talking about."

"I mean, I played sports when I was young," she said, "until they got all competitive, and, and..."

"KOBE, YOU ARE A BITCH! YOU ARE A LITTLE BITCH, KOBE."

"Nationalism... war... competition...." She was talking to me, I think, but I can't be sure, because I wasn't really listening to her babble.

Typical sports fans...

"Lindsey," I said, "sports are something that transcend national boundaries. Sports bring people together." I told her about how they give me goosebumps, about how much they've taught me about life. I told her about the bond I have with my father, and how large of a role baseball has played in that. I told her about Tanzania, and how that court at Soweto was the only place where people didn't view me as a white man, or as an ATM machine, but as a human being: Can you ball, or can you not?

Bet you can't tell me who's black, white and Arab in this photo, can you? And that is a beautiful thing.

Sports are an equalizer, a unifying force in the world. Competition exists, but that is not why people truly love sports. Real wars are markedly different forms of competition.

"Have you ever played on a team, on a real team?" I asked.

"I played sports when I was young, but--"

"You don't know what it feels like to bond with teammates, to have a common goal, to work for that goal to and win together, or lose together," I said, just racking up the tallies. It was like Bayles 8, Lindsey 0 at this point. "Sports are not about nationalism, either. I don't even know what that sentence means. I do find it a little weird, though, that we have to sing the National Anthem before games." I mean come on, that is a little weird. "And I think it's a little scary that they do fly overs with F-16's and stuff." Or have General Petraeus flip the coin at the Super Bowl, for that matter. "But sports are about coming together, Lindsey. Stop being a hater."

"Playing sports, maybe," she said, backtracking, though judging by the slight slur in her voice, she still didn't seem to quite understand that she had just waded into shark infested waters wearing a blood soaked wet suit. "But watching them? It's just about..."

"Nationalism? War?" I asked. Still staring at the screen.

No wonder the rockets won Game 6. They've got a Chinese nationalist and an Argentine nationalist ... and they're angry! Grrrrrr! Sports! GRRRRRRR! WAR!!

"Lindsey, I don't even know what that means, what you're trying to say. OH COME ON THAT WAS A FOUL." My eyes had drifted over towards her temporarily, but that no-call brought them right back to the screen. We have to win this game or we go home ... or stay ... home. "What you're doing right now Lindsey is called 'being a hater.' Stop being a hater. You don't know what you're even saying."

"It's just me asking a question," she said.

"No. It was you telling me sports suck. It's being a hater. Do I tell you art sucks? No. Do I tell Steven that music sucks? No. I am not a hater. You are a hater. On the streets we call it 'drinking Haterade.'"

"You spend a lot of time on the streets?" Steven, our other neighbor, interrupted, from his spot on his front porch about 15 yards away.

"Yeah, dude," I said, pounding my fist into my chest. "Me and Obama."

"Nice." He laughed, as he strummed his guitar.

"I just think sports are..." Lindsey would not give it up. She cannot give it up.

"You know what you're doing right now?" I asked rhetorically, using it as a trigger for me politiely telling her to quit being such a bia bia. "You're doing what so many people in this city do: you're soooo 'open minded' that you're actually closed minded.

"Don't be like that, Lindsey. Don't do that."

"I'm not hating," she said. "It's just ... nationalism."

It's just ... Austin.

But at least the Rockets are taking it back to L.A., baby.

It makes no sense.

I started to type the sentence, and it hit me. Why it took 25 years, two months, and however many days to come to me, I have no idea. But it hit me this afternoon.

Why do they call them "armed gunmen?"

They're gunmen, so obviously, they're armed.

"Why do they call them 'armed gunmen'?" I asked. "I mean, they're gunmen. They have to be armed."

I think out loud from the safety of my little cubicle pretty often, and usually I get at least one response. There are four people that can hear me.

No one responded today. Just silence and the sound of tapping computer keys in that part of the office.

Then I deleted what I'd written, and just went with plain old "gunmen."

Why I love Austin:

I woke up today and went to Barton Springs. I swam in a cold, wonderfully refreshing natural body of water, and I read my book, learning about the Ottoman Empire's international situation in the first decade plus change of the 20th century. Then I went to work, my part time gig serving beers on a party boat on Lake Austin. It was a UT graduation party hosted by a most openly gay kid named AJ, who invited all of his 20-something year old (flamingly) gay friends and their hot, available female cohorts, who had no one to focus their attention on but me and the three other straight guys at the party, a.k.a. the only ones who ordered beer instead of "frozen margaritas." This caused me to rethink my stance on Brian's idea. After this party, while the boat was taking over an hour to cruise back to its dock, we put it in neutral, jumped off the roof and swam in Lake Austin underneath the full moon, while we were blaring Lee Scratch Perry dub tracks from the P.A. and counting our blessings to be alive. There wasn't another person in sight. It was perfect.

But now we're flashing forward to the very end of the night, when I'm walking past my office building (the one for my real job, one that doesn't allow me to go swimming at the end) on Lavaca. I'm walking past my office building at 2:15 in the morning because I'm coming back from a bar in the general vicinity of where I work, which means I park for free, in the garage. I will walk five thousand miles to take advantage of free parking.

I always wonder if anyone has ever noticed this by watching the CCTV videos.

Bars close at 2 in most parts of America. I'm not sure what the policy is in Louisiana.

There are four of them, and they're walking towards us -- it's me and a friend of a friend named Nancy, my guest since Thursday, a fellow world traveler and an opportunity for me to try and chip away at the immense debt of hospitality I owe to humanity in general for the countless free places I've been given to stay in my day. Nancy is British, and she was 15 when I was born. She is the shit. All I hope is that I was able to show her a good time in Austin, a place she had never been until now. These four dudes from the Bayou helped in that mission, I hope.

"Yo," the ringleader says, "we're tryin' to find the PARTY around here, man! You know where one's at?" He spoke in that sort of ghetto-rural, but not quite full blown wigger accent, one that's quite common in many parts of the world where the local Dollar General doubles as the Friday night hangout.

"I think most of the parties are closed, man. It's already after two."

This did not seem to make much sense to them.

Neither did the empty coconut shell I was holding in my hand.

About 20 minutes before this, Andrew had found it on the street. I kept it with plans to turn it into an ash tray, just like the one Hunter and I had in Tanzania (which, ironically enough, came from a coconut shell we found on the ground). And I was tossing it up in the air to myself as I told these four guys from Louisiana that there were no parties to be found.

"Is that a coconut shell man?" one of them asked.

"Yeah man," I said. "This is Austin! Duh!"

"We're from Louisiana, man!"

(Which you already know.)

"Listen, y'all," I said, as my last words, "I do not know of any parties going on, but if you continue walking down this street, and keep asking people like you just asked me, I know that with your can-do spirit, you will find that party."

This led to raucous applause. I turned to walk across the street, just in time to see this:

"I'm goin' get my F***IN' DICK WET!!" And then he threw his bottle of water against the sidewalk and yelled, "Whooooo!!!"

Geaux get 'em, Tiger. Geaux get 'em.

Pulling a Bayless.

I met a girl last night, a friend of a friend, who's riding her bike from Austin to Alaska this summer. I'd heard stories about her before, and was extremely excited to meet this person in the flesh. Anyone who has the balls to ride their bike from here to Alaska is a badass, and I want to be their friend.

So there we are, and I'm asking her questions about her bike trip: how long it will take (70 days); how much has she been training to get ready (starting in December, she rides at least three days a week, between 25 and 60 miles each time, depending on the day); which route will she be taking ("I'm going through Central America," she said, "through Colorado," before I explained to her that she shouldn't phrase it that way, porque me confunde); where is her final destination exactly (Anchorage); stuff like that.

And then, someone else chimes in with a question:

"What are you doing this for?"

------------------------------------------------------------------------

In high school, it was called "pulling a Bayless." Anything that was said which made fun of/spoke irreverently about another race, religion, political affiliation, gender, sexual orientation, person's mother, anything -- but only if it was said right in front of the last possible person you'd want to hear -- was "pulling a Bayless."

Borat pulls Bayless' all the time, except he's doing it on purpose.

Let's be clear: I'm not a racist, I'm not a sexist, I'm not an anythingist. I'm honest, with myself at least -- and I try to be honest with other people as well. And honestly, I think it's funny and somehow morally justified to make fun of everyone, without exception, because that, my friend, is the meaning of true equality. It don't matter if you're black or white or a freak like Michael Jackson. I will make fun of you, just slightly less than I make fun of myself (but for some people, I will rip on you much more than I could ever dream of ripping on myself -- you know who you are).

This, by the way, was especially true in high school, when I was a much bigger asshole than I am today. This was when the phrase "pulling a Bayless" was coined. I could try and say that I just couldn't catch a break back then, that it was simply a four-year streak of bad luck, but it's also true that I was constantly putting myself in a position to get caught saying something stupid, because I was saying stupid things with a much higher frequency in those days.

"You could ... assume everyone was gay, and not say anything offensive," Dwight once told Michael in "The Office," in the episode when it was revealed that Oscar was gay, and Michael was all torn up about having once called him "faggy." "Yeah," Michael answered, rolling his eyes at what he thought to be an incredibly dumb suggestion, "I'm sure everyone would appreciate me treating them like they were gay."

I just tried to find that clip on entertonement.com, but it wasn't there. I did, however find a Dwight clip where he himself sort of pulled a Bayless ... only it wasn't in front of someone whose mother had actually died of cancer, and therefore, it wasn't a Bayless at all.

----------------------------------------------------------------------

"What are you doing this for?"

We're back at the original scene now, by the way.

"Oh, cancer research," she said, matter of factly.

"Yeah, right," I thought. "And I lived in Africa for over a year because I had always had a burning desire to help Tanzanian oprhans, and not because I just wanted to chill with my best friend in a foreign land, and would have taken any job that would have allowed me to do that."

"Oh come on," I said, cutting in, "you didn't do it for cancer research. You did it because you wanted to ride your bike to freaking Alaska, dude!"

I thought it would draw a laugh.

"Actually I lost my mother to cancer, so..."

But I thought wrong.

---------------------------------------------------------------------------

(Cue the crickets)

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Not knowing what to say, I tried to make a joke to make up for the failed joke which had gotten me into this incredibly awkward situation in the first place.

"Wanna get away?" I asked out loud, looking in the distance.

Then I began to apologize profusely.

I felt horrible. Who makes a cancer joke to a girl whose mother died of cancer? Come on, Bayless! What are you DOING?

I kept apologizing, profusely.

"It's okay, it's okay," she assured me. "It's fine." A strange scene: a girl who lost her mother to cancer, trying to make me feel better about it. I am going to Hell.

I kept apologizing.

The look on my friend's face -- the girl who had introduced me to her -- said it all: "You are an idiot."

"I could hear it coming," she said later on while standing in line with my British guest I have in town at the moment. "And I was trying to stomp on his foot, but then I realized, it was already in his mouth."

"It would have been so much funnier if she had just reacted really, really poorly to that," Jamison was telling me simultaneously, when it was just the two of us rehashing the event that had just transpired, and wondering out loud if the image of my Uzbek-asshole face would be her motivating force as she pedaled up the formidable mountain chain that cuts across Central America.

"Yeah," I shot back, "it would have been funnier for YOU!"

I was glad to be holding a beer at that moment. I drank it very fast.

And before leaving, I made sure to find this poor girl -- an inspiration, a selfless person, the opposite of this guy -- and apologize, again. And again. And about three more times after that.

"I promise," she said, "I'm fine. Don't lose any sleep over it, all right?"

"That's why I'm about to buy another beer," I said.

There's a reason why Borat was such an easy character to play.
It's because people like this give South Asia a reputation for not knowing the what the hell is going on.


I came across this photo in an Argentine newspaper this past Tuesday. It was taken in Islamabad, Pakistan.

According to the caption, it was also taken at an anti-Taliban rally.

"Someone desperately needs to explain to these guys the nuances of the English language," was the first thing I thought.

Later that night, I was on Skype talking to a guy who lives in New Delhi. His name is Bahar, and he is a photo editor for the AFP, sort of the French version of the Associated Press, in charge of South Asia. I was interviewing Bahar for this story I'm writing about him for a UVa alumni magazine. Not realizing that this photo was an actual AFP photo, I excitedly began to describe to him what I had come across only hours before, about to reach the point in the story where I start mimicking a high school cheerleader when he cut me off:

"Are you talking about the 'Go Taliban Go' one?"

"Yes!" I exclaimed. "How did you know? Did you see that?"

"Yeah," Bahar said, chuckling like a person who knows that the next words out of his mouth are only going to cause an even bigger commotion, "I edited that photo."

You can guess how I reacted to that.

He laughed as I yelled into the microphone. "I actually have a lot of other photos from that series. One of them has a guy with a 'Go America Go' sticker."

He promised to email it to me when he gets back from Kashmir. And I promised to print it out and tape it to my fridge.

Being a third wheel sucks.
Being a third wheel at a gay bar? Worst idea ever.


My Friday night was like a mixture of "A Night at the Roxbury" and "The Sandlot." From 11 to 1:30, my friend Brian and I rode bikes all around Austin, and we didn't even have a bed time. We rode around the lake, we rode around downtown, we even went into a bar at one point and had a drink. Brian was hoping our bike helmets, the antithesis of the standard hair-gelled, Afflicted Friday night culture in modern, metro times, would actually get us girls. I suspected this was wishful thinking. I was proven correct, and the bike riding continued.

Once we had gotten back to the lake, Brian's phone started buzzing. He pulled it out of his pocket to read a text message from his back up plan, some girl he probably met on Craigslist or Adult Friend Finder.

"Hey man," he said, as we were about to pedal across the road, "this girl is trying to get me to come meet up with her at this gay bar."

And, hold up, wait, let me guess: he wanted me to come?

"Wanna come?"

Ding-ding-ding! Tell 'em what he wins, Bob!

A chaaaaaaance to be a third wheel at a gaaaaaaaay bar!

Not a line on my face moved as I stared back at him.

"No," I said, with an expression as blank as an untouched canvas. "I don't."

The last time I had to play third wheel, coincidentally, had been at the very bar where Brian's bike helmet theory had just failed. It was in January, right after I'd moved to Austin, and my host family (this is how Tony referred to himself for the first three weeks I lived here, since I was crashing on his couch) had been trying to get a big group to go out to the Lucky Lounge. I tagged along. It was only once we were in the car going to pick up Tony's then-lady friend that he let me know, everyone else had bailed. It was just going to be the three of us that night.

I thanked him profusely for the opportunity to feel so awkward, before moving to the backseat and eeeee'ing the shit out of him.

The ensuing three hours were extremely uncomfortable, as Tony's girl tried to make me feel more included by periodically giving me seductive eyes, offering to buy me champagne, letting loose with Spring Break type howls, and doing her best to sexily dance in front of me in equal proportion to the amount of time alotted to Tony, with whom it was understood by all she would be going home that night. She thought I would feel left out or something, I guess, if she didn't make me think that yes, oh yes, you have a chance, Bayless.

I felt uncomfortable as a third wheel in that scenario. Just try and imagine how I'd feel as a third wheel at Oil Can Harry's.

So we rode bikes back to my place.

And then, after hanging out for about half an hour, once all the bars, even the gay ones, had closed, Brian went over to his back up plan's house.

And since I do not have a back up plan, I went to bed.

The end.