Driving around an ocean-front community, I am inspired to create a book of photography called “Dick Move” that will be pictures of the kind of architectural monstrosity created by someone who wants a view but does not really have one from their property.
La Catholique
This is old timey. I live here now.
Cigarette smoking and sincere mullets are alive and well at the Days Inn in Ocean Shores, WA.
And speaking of language fashion…
…I cannot believe anyone is still using the “Blanky McBlankerson” construction as a punchline.
I really wish I could invent some kind of internet worm that would make every home page in the English-speaking world a list of tired, battered, exhausted, threadbare internet language trends and beg BEG people to stop using them.
Watching TV at the hotel, I learn that National Geographic is now referring to itself as “Nat Geo.” I am sure that this abbreviated form has been used before, but the way the announcer said it just made me imagine strategy meetings about appealing to younger viewers and this was one of the sad, pointless decisions made that actually seems to highlight the old-fashionedness of something like National Geographic rather than make it seem like a contemporary of omg and lol. (An old-fashionedness I like, btw.)
It reminds me of when I got a bunch of brightly-patterned Forenza shorts as back-to-school clothes and thought it would somehow make me seem cool. Instead I got to school, Lauren Bradley took one look and said, with the usual Mean Girl sneer, “Are those Vans shorts? Oh, no they’re Forenza.” My future seemed pretty clear at that moment, even though I stayed in denial about it.
My only red X was because I forgot to tidy my apartment for 5 minutes after waking up. The numbers that look red are actually orange, a color indicating I was “off” by a little.
I spent a little too much time on Business, Unpleasantries, and Reading. But now it’s 9:15pm and I don’t know what to do. I already did everything. Today was one of the most productive days of my life, and had some of the most relaxing moments I’ve had off-vacation in years.
“Unpleasantries” is an emotional category. It means, “things I never feel like doing in the moment”, such as making a dentist appointment or calling Verizon. These are candidates for procrastination, and if I don’t make a special category for them, they will never get done.
It’s all about limits. I can get neurotic with unlimited time — not just in general in my life, but in any moment. I love that everything I do has an impending cutoff. It doesn’t make me work harder, but smarter. “I shouldn’t be checking Tumblr” is a MUCH easier thing to admit during a 90-minute business sprint than a 7 hour shift.
Oh, and I credit some of this to Rob Mizell’s suggestion of pre-visualizing the day. In ten minutes I solved a lot of daunting problems, which were really just balls of anxiety that held no power whatsoever. The instant I brought them into my awareness they evaporated.
I’m looking forward to tomorrow. This is a computer program that I build on the weekend and takes a whole week to run. A good Monday is no guarantee of a good Tuesday, etc.
Good night.
Sometimes I remember my perspective from, say, a year ago, and when I do, I realize I was so incredibly stupid that I’m amazed I was able to function. Does this ever stop?
the older I get the more I look like a man who should be buying black market vodka in Czechoslovakia in 1983 and it’s just so depressing on a variety of levels, not least of which is I am not a dude.
The usual little insults
Listening to this week’s On The Media podcast. Usual hosts are off, it is instead being hosted by NPR sports guy Mike Pesca. So of course he does a few stories on the sports media.
At one point, Pesca says that if a reported secret list of 100 steroid users becomes public in the future, and any of those users have been put into the hall of fame, how would the writers feel?
This was not said with the kind of seriousness used to discuss, say, the disputed FL results of 2000 elections.
But it was also not said with any kind of acknowledgement of the inherent frivolity of a) a hall of fame, b) a hall of fame for people who play a game for a living, c) a bunch of writers who write about a game selecting people for a hall of fame for people who play a game for a living, d) a bunch of writers who write about a game selecting people for a hall of fame for people who play a game for a living and who may or may not have injected themselves with drugs that make their penises smaller.
So here’s the thing: I don’t care about sports. It is the one topic in the universe that when I hear people talk about it, I feel no itchy need to go read some “Sports for Dummies.” Normally, any unfamiliar proper noun in an article or podcast sends me to an internet search, but I do not Wikipedia the names mentioned in sports-related human-interest stories. I have no idea who Poor Little Tink Tink is in real life and have, for me, a stunning complete lack of curiosity to find out.
That said, I hold no ill will or scorn towards people who DO care about sports. I think that’s totally cool.
I admire, in a dispassionate way, people who train their bodies and have that kind of discipline, and think being interested in it, like any hobby, is a nice way for people to focus on something besides themselves. Beyond that, I have no positive or negative moral judgment on either liking or being disinterested in sports.
These things are just things that exist that you like or don’t care about it and the world keeps on turning.
So as an outsider listening to this, it suddenly struck me that this would how comic it would inherently be to have anyone talking about FASHION with this level of seriousness on this kind of program. Not to say that there are not fashion awards and fashion shows, but the idea of a bunch of journalists wondering about the historic impact of some kind of “Best Of” list would have years down the road could only possibly play on a show like this as completely absurd.
Because in general, outside the fashion world, fashion people are made out to be totally ridiculous when being equally serious about what they care about. And why is that?
I mean, what are these two things but just some things human beings do? Sports is (are?) human beings disciplining their bodies and competing with and against each other in games of strength, agility and other physical attributes. Fashion is human beings meeting a basic need, expressing themselves through a particular form, working in creative collaboration with other human beings, and often personally developing a particular skill or craft.
And I realize this is not particularly deep or illuminating, but listening to this, this struck me - the disparity between how interest in sports is portrayed (reverence, noble, even obsessiveness is given a sort of chuckling pass) and interest in fashion is portrayed (height of meaningless frivolity, shallowness, uselessness, idiocy) - and I JUST GOT THE USUAL AMOUNT OF MAD.
“his mastery of gesture”
from the wikipedia on Baryshnikov.
For the past two weeks I have been completely obsessed with watching and re-watching Katt Williams’ routines. It’s not even the content of the jokes, it’s the way he uses his body and his voice, it feels like music and dance.
Tonight on TBTL, a segment on hit songs from flop movies brought up “Say You Say Me” from “White Nights,” a favorite from childhood. I watched the below clip and a clip of “Push Comes to Shove,” a video I watched quite a lot as a kid. (My sister was in ballet.)
Read the wikipedia, see that phrase, lightbulb.
I feel like this is what I need to develop as a writer. Always the explaining with me, the detail. They have their place, and you don’t throw out one thing just because you get a wild hair about another.
But the gesture, right, the gesture!
I have always loved cartoons, how much action is conveyed with the fewest of pen lines. This is what I am responding to in Katt Williams and Baryshnikov. The gesture! Something to think about/work on.
