say cheese

I've been scanning photos from old family albums that my grandmother let me borrow. It's interesting to see relatives that I only knew in their winter years depicted as laughing teenagers or young mothers. What I find almost as intriguing as the images themselves is the matter of who took the photos. I don't profess to know much about the technicalities of photography, but from my perspective, some of these pictures are really compelling. Maybe I'm just blinded by the grainy film and the antiquated scenery.

At any rate, today's diptych consists of two pictures that I found hilarious. I don't know who the man is taking the portrait or who took the picture of him taking the portrait (things I will find out at Christmas), but I love the story that they tell.

don't fret my pet

There's a lot of hoopla out there about staying present and experiencing the moment and blah blah blah, but sometimes it's essential to look ahead.

When you're riding a motorcycle (or a bicycle for that matter) and you need to make a tight turn, it helps to look at where you want to go and almost like magic, the bike will follow your gaze. There's this awful exercise that they make everyone do in the motorcycle safety course that consists of making a figure eight in a very small box outlined on the pavement. The only way to execute the move is to turn your head in the direction that you need to go. If you look directly at the course the bike is taking instead of where the bike needs to go, you'll never be able to make the tight turn required to stay in the box.

The same thing goes for reading music. To stay with the tempo, you have to be able to play one note while looking at the next set of notes to see where the melody is headed. If you look at each note as you play it, you will always be behind the beat, and if you're sight reading (i.e. playing a piece of music for the first time, possibly for an audition or for your monthly hootenanny), forget it. You'll stumble all over yourself and wish you had taken up latch hooking instead of music.

It also comes in handy for instruments that have a large geography to cover. If I'm playing the guitar, and I need to get from the 3rd fret to the 7th fret, the best way for me to hit the right position is to play the 3rd fret chord while looking at the 7th fret so my hand knows where it's going (assuming you have to look when you play, which I do because I'm just not there yet). If I wait until the last second to mentally and physically transition to the next chord, it's sloppy every time.

What's my point? Well I thought I was going to be able to wrap this up neatly into a lesson-shaped package, but I'm having trouble keeping it cohesive today. So, instead of hitting "save now" and attempting to perfect this message, which we all know I will avoid like the dentist, I'm going to publish as is because it's been far too long since I've contributed to the cloud. Sometimes you have to vomit before you can get to the good stuff.

contingency plan

When I was about 10 years old, I had a Bart Simpson* skateboard, care of the JCPenney wish book catalogue. It had gritty blacktop where your feet were supposed to go and a technicolor Bart head on both sides of the board. I used to lay on my stomach and ride down the hill that started at the sidewalk in front of our duplex (there's a scar on my left wrist from a botched attempt). I also spent hours in the driveway trying my best to perform the elusive ollie. My inability to perform this trick solidified my standing in the world of skateboarders: expert stomach rider/extreme novice on 2 feet.

This weekend I resurrected my Marty McFly costume for a Halloween party at my brother's house. Costumes are all about iconic props, so I borrowed a skateboard from one of charrow's co-workers. The day after the party, I noodled around on the skateboard on my mom's deserted suburban street. It started innocently enough. I rode down the sloped driveway and made wide, misshapen circles across the width of the street. But then, as I made a loop near the crest of a hill, I decided that it would be fun to coast down that hill. It didn't look that steep, and it ended at the grassy bank of an empty lot. About 15 seconds later, I seriously regretted my decision. The pavement got bumpier. The scattered gravel from the neighboring construction sites became thicker. And my speed suddenly surpassed my rudimentary stopping capabilities.

Faced with the prospect of hitting a chunk of gravel that would probably bring the board to a dead stop (and send me flying), I decided to take control of my battered fate and jump off the board. You know those moving walkways in airports? You know how even that moderate amount of extra speed makes it hard to transition onto stationary ground? Right. So I made it about 4 clamoring steps before my feet went out of from under me, and I did a belly flop/home run slide into the cul-de-sac.

End result: a torn running shirt, scuffed hands, a bloody patchwork on my left elbow, potentially bruised ribs, a bit of road rash on my left hip, and an anxious mother.

Lessons learned: elbows and ribs should not be used as brakes, and more importantly, do not ride down a hill without first having a Contingency Plan.

I am officially retired from all non-stomach riding skateboard activities. Cowabunga dudes.

*the irony of owning a Bart Simpson skateboard: I never, ever get Simpson quotes when they come up in conversation.

immaculate intelligence

Every now and then I take a trip into crazy land and read Penelope Trunk's Brazen Careerist blog. It's like a jar of pickled okra for your brain. Healthy, but soaked in brine. Her latest article on perfectionism contains the following statement: "The other huge problem with perfectionism is that people stop learning when they're constantly afraid of being wrong."

Hogwash.

Oh wait. She may have a point.

But you see, I have this strategy for learning that involves checking out as many library books as I can cram onto the bookshelf (a hodgepodge of fiction, non-fiction and what can only be categorized as self-help), and then I renew them as many times as I can until another patron puts them on hold. But I don't usually read them. I like to call it immaculate intelligence.

Okay, I admit it. I've stopped learning because I'm constantly afraid of being wrong or of being held accountable for information (equally as scary). One of Penelope's strategies is to allow yourself to be wrong in front of others, but I'm so petrified of looking like an imbecile that I rarely even start to formulate an opinion or a stance to throw out into the ether because I'm so entrenched in survival mode. When people ask me what I think about something, I freeze. Must.not.stand.out. Must.sound.intelligent. Must.make.it.look.like.I.know.what's.going.on. These are the things that go through my head on a regular basis.

The other problem with that stack of library books, or newspapers, or cursed New Yorker magazines is that I see them as a threat to the zero-sum game of maximizing time. If I sit down and read the newspaper, I am informing myself (with the exception of the highly political articles that I often skip or skim halfheartedly. sorry, friends). If I read a book about dogs, I'm giving myself a stronger knowledge base for my business. If I read a New Yorker, I'm giving myself an opportunity to actually join in on conversations that start with "hey did you read that article about X in last week's new yorker..." (this happens on a weekly basis, and I feel like a dunce every time because there are gobs of New Yorkers sitting around the apartment).

The point, in case I haven't beaten it to a pulp yet, is that these are all useful activities. Yet when I'm sitting at home deciding how to spend my time, I feel guilty about reading because it feels like a less than optimal pursuit. Do you know what I do instead? I dither around on the internet. And the whole time I think "I could be researching this book or writing that web content for my business site, but then I won't have any time to do those other 7 things I should be doing."

Oh the irony of maximizing. Because I'm so concerned about spending time on the best (i.e. most useful) activity, I avoid all activities and waste my life sitting on the couch covered in drooling cats and staring at this idiot box. Combine maximizing with a compulsive fear of failure and what do you get? A rambling blog post and a hefty late fee at the library.

self-monitoring specialist

"Ordinarily I don't like to be around interesting people because it means I have to be interesting" -- from LA Story (great steve martin movie)

On a scale of 1 to 10, I would clock in somewhere around a 15 for self-monitoring (it is what it sounds like). Do you know how hard is it to be interesting when you're checking constantly to see if you're being interesting?

I would say more on the subject, but I'm too worried about boring you.

damn the twitter

Something terrible happened last night: I used twitter. There were extenuating circumstances, and I'm ashamed to say that I have formed a begrudging respect for the twits who tweet.

Around 3am, Charrow woke me up and said "it smells like burning. what is that smell?? is there a fire?" I have always harbored a secret fear of middle of the night fires (sometimes I lay in bed trying to go to sleep and imagine how I would react to said disaster so that I have a basic formula for how to get out of the house), so we got out of bed to investigate. We both poked our noses out the window to catalogue the smell. Not cigarette smoke. No visible flames or plumes. Excessive chemical/plastic tinge. Very mysterious and noxious.

Charrow was satisfied with closing the window and trying to call 911 (busy), but I stood at the window to see if I could witness anyone else reacting to the weird odor. Not long into my observation campaign, a man popped out of his front door wearing only sweatpants and looked up and down the street conducting his own surveillance. He looked perplexed, but satisfied that he had investigated the situation and went back inside. Having had confirmation from the outside world that strange things were afoot, we decided to go have a look for ourselves. This was mostly my fault, because all I could think of was that some old lady in our building had fallen asleep with a candle burning and maybe there was a polyester blend afghan ablaze 2 floors above us.

The smell outside was, according to charrow, akin to a mouse caught in a toaster. Smokey, but not altogether natural. As we stood on the street gawking at the lack of evidence, a couple walked toward their car with their noses buried in their coats. We asked them if there was a fire somewhere and they told us that it was supposedly a tire factory in New Jersey. We went back inside and turned on the tv to confirm the rumor, but there was no breaking news to be found. After a minute of listening to NY1's squawking correspondent, I realized that we needed the instant reaction of the masses on twitter. So we did a search for #smell (a coarse method that produced surprisingly accurate results) and saw the twitter feed of dozens of people horrified by the smell that had been confirmed by several police precincts: Tire fire. New Jersey. Smoke made its way to brooklyn. Of course it's New Jersey's fault. etc., etc.

Damn you twitter for actually serving a purpose.

butt juice

Warning: bodily fluid is involved in what I am about to tell you.

So I was sitting at the desk trying to catch up on the latest Dooce-capades and daydreaming about apple picking when the orange cat hops up and decides it is his life's dream to be petted while drooling all over my keyboard. After a few minutes of neck careening and placating pats, I finally gave him a friendly nudge on his back legs as a way of saying "dear god, please get out of the way you attention whore of a cat." He flinched, and I felt a spritz of liquid hit my forehead.

Anyone want to guess what that liquid was?

Yes, that's right, it was butt juice (technically referred to as "anal gland expression"). I have officially been butt-juiced in the face by my cat. How fitting that it happened while reading Dooce, the queen of bodily fluid stories.