At the end of this glorious day, I am always reminded of the words of my immortal grandmother...."It's disGUSTing how we eat like gluttons like this every year!!" Thanks grandma, now not only am I physically uncomfortable, I'm emotionaly uncomfortable.
Happy Thanksgiving everyone!
Thursday, November 24, 2011
Tuesday, November 22, 2011
Let me tell you what you can do with that gravy...
I’ve said this before, but I feel like saying it again. Thanksgiving is my favorite holiday. No gifts. Well, kind of no gifts. I spend more on Thanksgiving than I do on Christmas (dried cherries are expensive and oddly, cranberries aren’t cranberries without cherries) but I’m also more confident that people will like what I’ve spent the money on.
If you haven’t made a turkey before, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is. That’s what the advertisers are counting on; that you think it’s hard so you’ll buy all this specialized crap to go with preparing this one bird this one day of the year. All you really need is salt, butter, some oranges and something that can be used to tie two knobby legs together.
The only thing that is tricky is the timing and that will depend on how much extra stuff you want to make and your day job. I go absolutely ape-shit over side dishes. I have no less than seven sides that I feel must accompany the caged, injected, oiled-up bird. I’m not going to tell you what they are because I want you to be surprised if you ever come over.
Other highlights of the holiday include football and then football…and pie.
The one thing I hate about this holiday is gravy. I HATE GRAVY. Always have, always will. I hate eating it, I hate smelling it, I hate looking at it, and I most certainly hate making it. I hate the stupid custom dish it has to be in. That stupid dish never fits into the hutch just right, you always have to move other dishes around and then the aesthestics are all off. Gravy ruins fung shui.
Gravy has stupid sayings too, like “It’s all gravy”. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Are they implying that gravy is easy? It’s not. You have to remember to add all this crap to the bottom of the roasting pan and then pour that little amount of liquid out of that big, heavy roasting pan into another one of the advertisers specialized pieces of crap to skim the fat off of the top which is replaced with more fat and some flour and then wisked in back in the huge roasting pan and then it has to be poured into the stupid fung shui-ruining dish and served right away because it sucks if it gets cold.
My potatoes are so stunning that they don’t need gravy. None of my life needs gravy. I have worked everything out so that I never have to utter the words “please pass the gravy”. I am the 1% that doesn’t need any goddamn gravy.
You can join me. We can increase to 2% and then maybe 10%. Take that first step, refuse to buy the fat skimmer. Next, throw out the gizzard and neck. Then, when you’ve gotten the proper amount of rest and have eaten three nutritious meals, bypass the package of gravy mix and the ready-to-eat gravy in a jar. You have to be at your peak condition to master this last step. This involves not only passing up a few food items, this involves changing the precepts of society.
You can do it. I believe in you. Just keep saying to yourself “NO FUCKING GRAVY!” Put gouda and heavy cream in the potatoes instead. You’ll thank me for it. Colors start to look brighter, aromas are more intense, laughter of children is more enjoyable with no gravy in your life. We can have a world with no gravy; a world with balanced china hutches and no stains on the table clothes (It’s always the gravy). It’s a glorious world I can see and I want you to join me in it. We’ll procreate and raise an entire community that knows nothing of gravy! Gravy-devouring countries will bow before us. WE SHALL RULE THE WORLD!
Okay, I gotta go boil the wild rice…
If you haven’t made a turkey before, you wouldn’t believe how easy it is. That’s what the advertisers are counting on; that you think it’s hard so you’ll buy all this specialized crap to go with preparing this one bird this one day of the year. All you really need is salt, butter, some oranges and something that can be used to tie two knobby legs together.
The only thing that is tricky is the timing and that will depend on how much extra stuff you want to make and your day job. I go absolutely ape-shit over side dishes. I have no less than seven sides that I feel must accompany the caged, injected, oiled-up bird. I’m not going to tell you what they are because I want you to be surprised if you ever come over.
Other highlights of the holiday include football and then football…and pie.
The one thing I hate about this holiday is gravy. I HATE GRAVY. Always have, always will. I hate eating it, I hate smelling it, I hate looking at it, and I most certainly hate making it. I hate the stupid custom dish it has to be in. That stupid dish never fits into the hutch just right, you always have to move other dishes around and then the aesthestics are all off. Gravy ruins fung shui.
Gravy has stupid sayings too, like “It’s all gravy”. WHAT DOES THAT MEAN??? Are they implying that gravy is easy? It’s not. You have to remember to add all this crap to the bottom of the roasting pan and then pour that little amount of liquid out of that big, heavy roasting pan into another one of the advertisers specialized pieces of crap to skim the fat off of the top which is replaced with more fat and some flour and then wisked in back in the huge roasting pan and then it has to be poured into the stupid fung shui-ruining dish and served right away because it sucks if it gets cold.
My potatoes are so stunning that they don’t need gravy. None of my life needs gravy. I have worked everything out so that I never have to utter the words “please pass the gravy”. I am the 1% that doesn’t need any goddamn gravy.
You can join me. We can increase to 2% and then maybe 10%. Take that first step, refuse to buy the fat skimmer. Next, throw out the gizzard and neck. Then, when you’ve gotten the proper amount of rest and have eaten three nutritious meals, bypass the package of gravy mix and the ready-to-eat gravy in a jar. You have to be at your peak condition to master this last step. This involves not only passing up a few food items, this involves changing the precepts of society.
You can do it. I believe in you. Just keep saying to yourself “NO FUCKING GRAVY!” Put gouda and heavy cream in the potatoes instead. You’ll thank me for it. Colors start to look brighter, aromas are more intense, laughter of children is more enjoyable with no gravy in your life. We can have a world with no gravy; a world with balanced china hutches and no stains on the table clothes (It’s always the gravy). It’s a glorious world I can see and I want you to join me in it. We’ll procreate and raise an entire community that knows nothing of gravy! Gravy-devouring countries will bow before us. WE SHALL RULE THE WORLD!
Okay, I gotta go boil the wild rice…
Tuesday, November 8, 2011
When I was young, we had to sit there and hold our broken bone until it healed...
So Dominique Barber broke his foot and the technical term is Lisfranc fracture where all the metatarsals are displaced from the tarsus and I know that’s right because it’s on Wikipedia and it reminds me of my friend Linda’s fracture but anyway I was noticing that Mr. Barber had a red cast on but then allegedly changed it to blue and white which I have to admit left me speechless for a moment as I pondered how that could be possible since a cast is supposed to be super protective and should then be not easily taken off OR CHANGE COLORS so where does he get off being able to change colors like that or even get to HAVE colors in the FIRST PLACE unlike his predecessors like me who have broken my foot although not the tarsus unless my tarsus is located on the side of my foot where that bump is which it is not so it was my talus bone that I broke which is close to tarsus but only in spelling and which my doctor at the time gleefully referred to as my “foot bone!” and put a plain white plaster cast on it leaving only my toe nails poking out thank goodness because I could at least still paint my nails and impress my seemingly easily-impressed doctor but by not telling me the correct medical term I was forced to say that I broke my "foot bone!” instead of getting to say “talus” but that wouldn’t have changed the color of my cast but it does lead me to wonder if a red cast itches a lot because a white one sure does and I know my doctor told me not to stick anything down there to scratch no matter how much it itched but I think it had been some time since he had his own plain white cast on and forgot how absolutely annoying that little itch can be so when no one was looking I grabbed my mom’s canister of knitting needles where there were a ton to choose from and I first reached for the pretty pink metal ones but then I felt a little bad about using the pretty ones because she used those all the time so I grabbed the ugly plastic ones and rammed one of them down there where I was able to get really close to my itchy “foot bone!” but I got a little carried away with the motion and all of a sudden out of nowhere it broke WHILE STILL IN MY CAST which is just what my doctor told me would happen and I didn’t believe him but now there was evidence that he was right but I was still stuck with one broken plastic knitting needle in my cast and I began to panic has I imagined my foot turning gangrene just like my doctor said would happen if I stuck anything down there and then I imagined the look on my mother’s face when the cast came off yelling OH MY GOD and then THAT’S WHERE THAT NEEDLE WENT as the broken needle fell to the cold hard hospital floor and the doctor turning to grab the skill saw to saw off my foot since it was gangrene and just as I got to this point in my imagination I managed to grab hold of the little flat top edge of the stuck needle with its free partner and yank it out but not without leaving what felt like a long wide scratch on my leg that I was certain would turn gangrene so I was damned if I did and damned if I didn’t but all was well when the cast finally did come off and there was no yelling or sawing or gangrene. Just a stupid white cast on the floor.
Sunday, October 30, 2011
I'm going to have to tweet this....
So, this whole social media thing still bugs me sometimes. People have loved to attribute incredible commendations to it when it’s played a part in movements like in Egypt, other Middle East and N. African countries. I guess if you’re in prison and you have access to a smart phone, it’d be great to let someone know you’re there to see if they can come and get you out.
To me, it seems that social media is currently having the same integrity issues that we had to deal with when the internet first came on the scene. When I started my college career, the internet didn’t exist. We had to go and sit in a mold-ridden library and page through little cards (while standing) to find the volume of a certain journal we needed and then, after searching through 50 articles, try to scrounge through our laundry coinage to find enough change to copy the pages we needed, and then walk home barefoot, uphill, through snow.
When I went through the second phase of my college career, the internet was up and running but many journals were still in the process of converting their entire libraries to online sources. The search engines were mostly adequate, but the keywords were hit and miss (at least you could sit while doing this). It didn’t take long for professors to get savvy about this and devote some substantial time to educate students on how to tell the difference between a reliable internet source and Wikipedia. You can now really get some good work done using internet sources.
Just when I get used to the idea that Satan doesn’t really live on the internet, along comes Facebook and Twitter. No, I do not want to tweet my thoughts to a news program to be recited in real time. A commentator just stated that tweets are “quick and to the point”, which is true, but many stated "facts" are unreliable, unsubstantiated, and simply untrue. Comments are posted at such a quick rate that I don’t understand how there’s time to do some fact-checking. It doesn’t take long to google a sentence and come up with what looks like a good article supporting your opinions, but how do you know that’s right? The reason why it takes so long to make scientific progress is because of the very definition of science - you have to replicate experiments to make sure the results are valid. This takes time. It should take time.
The pro of communicating strictly through electronic media is that you can hide from people. The con is that people can hide from you.
It allows me the luxury of taking on more projects because I can work on them in bits and pieces when I have time and then email results. The recipient can read them when they have time and then can respond to me when they have a moment. If that moment is 11:00pm, I would much rather get an email than a phone call. I hate the phone. Let’s not rehash that conversation.
Siri is what is really scaring me. Are we now going to ask a phone to answer questions only we can answer for ourselves? In a commercial, a guy asks Siri if he can walk to the hotel. If the man has legs and they are functional, then yes, he can walk to the hotel. Is Siri programmed to automatically know the weather conditions, the best route to the hotel, the amount of foot or automobile congestion, and then decide if this is the best option for this particular individual? I see this as a ripe opportunity for villains like Gargamel or Mojo Jojo to take over the world by instructing us to keep going straight instead of taking that left turn at Albuquerque. That might get me lost on my way to find this guy who can help me survive after the sun explodes in 2012.
To me, it seems that social media is currently having the same integrity issues that we had to deal with when the internet first came on the scene. When I started my college career, the internet didn’t exist. We had to go and sit in a mold-ridden library and page through little cards (while standing) to find the volume of a certain journal we needed and then, after searching through 50 articles, try to scrounge through our laundry coinage to find enough change to copy the pages we needed, and then walk home barefoot, uphill, through snow.
When I went through the second phase of my college career, the internet was up and running but many journals were still in the process of converting their entire libraries to online sources. The search engines were mostly adequate, but the keywords were hit and miss (at least you could sit while doing this). It didn’t take long for professors to get savvy about this and devote some substantial time to educate students on how to tell the difference between a reliable internet source and Wikipedia. You can now really get some good work done using internet sources.
Just when I get used to the idea that Satan doesn’t really live on the internet, along comes Facebook and Twitter. No, I do not want to tweet my thoughts to a news program to be recited in real time. A commentator just stated that tweets are “quick and to the point”, which is true, but many stated "facts" are unreliable, unsubstantiated, and simply untrue. Comments are posted at such a quick rate that I don’t understand how there’s time to do some fact-checking. It doesn’t take long to google a sentence and come up with what looks like a good article supporting your opinions, but how do you know that’s right? The reason why it takes so long to make scientific progress is because of the very definition of science - you have to replicate experiments to make sure the results are valid. This takes time. It should take time.
The pro of communicating strictly through electronic media is that you can hide from people. The con is that people can hide from you.
It allows me the luxury of taking on more projects because I can work on them in bits and pieces when I have time and then email results. The recipient can read them when they have time and then can respond to me when they have a moment. If that moment is 11:00pm, I would much rather get an email than a phone call. I hate the phone. Let’s not rehash that conversation.
Siri is what is really scaring me. Are we now going to ask a phone to answer questions only we can answer for ourselves? In a commercial, a guy asks Siri if he can walk to the hotel. If the man has legs and they are functional, then yes, he can walk to the hotel. Is Siri programmed to automatically know the weather conditions, the best route to the hotel, the amount of foot or automobile congestion, and then decide if this is the best option for this particular individual? I see this as a ripe opportunity for villains like Gargamel or Mojo Jojo to take over the world by instructing us to keep going straight instead of taking that left turn at Albuquerque. That might get me lost on my way to find this guy who can help me survive after the sun explodes in 2012.
Monday, October 17, 2011
Ring Ring! Are you going to answer that?
I hate phones. Well, that’s not entirely true. I’ve always hated the phones I’ve owned. There are plenty of phones out there that I love, but I’ve never been fortunate enough to own them. When I was about 10, I remember going into the AT&T Bell store at Minnehaha Center (back when “Bell” was still attached to the AT&T brand). They used to have the coolest phones. There was one in a big, oval sea shell which I had planned on putting in my bathroom in my apartment in Manhattan (I had big dreams when I was 10, which included a red corvette). My favorite was the French-style phone. I think Katherine Chancellor had one on “The Young and the Restless”. I found one years later in a Hello Kitty store but the base was way to light and it would fling around everywhere whenever I tried to answer it. Plus, there was plumage wrapped around the receiver, which always stuck to my lip gloss.
The phones I owed always had a loud, horrid ring tone; never a pretty, dainty, pleasant one. It was a kind of ring that sounded like I was already being yelled at by the caller before I even answered. You may be thinking to yourself that now, in this modern era of choosing anything one wants for a ring tone, why haven’t I found a nice ring tone yet? Because I have the plan that doesn’t allow me to. In order to get the nice ring tones, you have to buy the large plans with tons of bells and whistles that I never use. I have the basic plan with 300 minutes per month (voice only) and I barely make it to the half-way mark. They’re not going to give a nice ring tone to someone who won’t hear it often enough.
Texting on the other hand…..I am starting to go off the deep end with texting. At first, I hated it because I don’t have a normal keyboard on my phone, it’s a number pad and trying to type words on a number pad is excruciating to someone who can type an average of 92 wpm on a normal keyboard. I didn’t like the general idea of texting because I thought it wasn’t personal enough. I was also a bit annoyed with others around me who would text while just standing at a bus stop. For some reason, this really really annoyed me. No one was looking around anymore. There was stuff happening all around, people to see, eyes to make contact with, squirrels to watch duke it out over a French fry out of a U of M garbage can, and no one was catching this great stuff.
A few things started to change my outlook. First, I realized how convenient a cell phone could be. I still needed a landline to let people into my building, but being able to call people while outside of my apartment was a feeling much like the first time I was allowed to stay home alone – total FREEDOM. If I had one while I was on jury duty, my spring break would have been a lot better.
Second, I realized how even much more freeing it was to be able to respond after having time to think through my answer and then type it out accordingly, which is a wonderful option for a stammerer to have.
So now I’m sold on texting. I want to do it all the time. I wish I would have come to this conclusion when picking out my service plan. I chose the voice only plan where texting was extra. Now, my texting charges make up the bulk of my bill.
I am currently in the interesting position of either upgrading my service plan (which will lock me in for 24 months), or finding a new phone and starting fresh. I’m considering getting a phone with a camera, so I can take pictures of squirrels duking it out over a French fry at a U of M garbage can. Seriously, you have to see that because it is hilARious!
So a new phone is probably in my future, but this leads me to another thought – am I setting myself up for a series of arguments and misunderstandings based on the content of my texts? What I think is funny and what others think is funny can sometimes be two TOTALLY different things.
There is a group of people who know me well enough to be able to understand my meaning, but I sometimes forget that there is a much larger group of people in the world who don’t. Lately, I’ve been forgetting this when I send emails at work and when I tweet. Or maybe they are laughing and I’m just not “seeing” it. That’s one big downfall with this worldwide communication change. You don’t have the immediate facial expression/reaction in a text message. Many times I really miss that. Emoticons are not a human face.
The phones I owed always had a loud, horrid ring tone; never a pretty, dainty, pleasant one. It was a kind of ring that sounded like I was already being yelled at by the caller before I even answered. You may be thinking to yourself that now, in this modern era of choosing anything one wants for a ring tone, why haven’t I found a nice ring tone yet? Because I have the plan that doesn’t allow me to. In order to get the nice ring tones, you have to buy the large plans with tons of bells and whistles that I never use. I have the basic plan with 300 minutes per month (voice only) and I barely make it to the half-way mark. They’re not going to give a nice ring tone to someone who won’t hear it often enough.
Texting on the other hand…..I am starting to go off the deep end with texting. At first, I hated it because I don’t have a normal keyboard on my phone, it’s a number pad and trying to type words on a number pad is excruciating to someone who can type an average of 92 wpm on a normal keyboard. I didn’t like the general idea of texting because I thought it wasn’t personal enough. I was also a bit annoyed with others around me who would text while just standing at a bus stop. For some reason, this really really annoyed me. No one was looking around anymore. There was stuff happening all around, people to see, eyes to make contact with, squirrels to watch duke it out over a French fry out of a U of M garbage can, and no one was catching this great stuff.
A few things started to change my outlook. First, I realized how convenient a cell phone could be. I still needed a landline to let people into my building, but being able to call people while outside of my apartment was a feeling much like the first time I was allowed to stay home alone – total FREEDOM. If I had one while I was on jury duty, my spring break would have been a lot better.
Second, I realized how even much more freeing it was to be able to respond after having time to think through my answer and then type it out accordingly, which is a wonderful option for a stammerer to have.
So now I’m sold on texting. I want to do it all the time. I wish I would have come to this conclusion when picking out my service plan. I chose the voice only plan where texting was extra. Now, my texting charges make up the bulk of my bill.
I am currently in the interesting position of either upgrading my service plan (which will lock me in for 24 months), or finding a new phone and starting fresh. I’m considering getting a phone with a camera, so I can take pictures of squirrels duking it out over a French fry at a U of M garbage can. Seriously, you have to see that because it is hilARious!
So a new phone is probably in my future, but this leads me to another thought – am I setting myself up for a series of arguments and misunderstandings based on the content of my texts? What I think is funny and what others think is funny can sometimes be two TOTALLY different things.
There is a group of people who know me well enough to be able to understand my meaning, but I sometimes forget that there is a much larger group of people in the world who don’t. Lately, I’ve been forgetting this when I send emails at work and when I tweet. Or maybe they are laughing and I’m just not “seeing” it. That’s one big downfall with this worldwide communication change. You don’t have the immediate facial expression/reaction in a text message. Many times I really miss that. Emoticons are not a human face.
Wednesday, October 5, 2011
I believe I'll go with All Lacquered Up...
So here I sit, in my backyard, on an October day that is still in the high ‘70’s. The only use I can find for this weather is that it helps dry my nail polish more quickly.
I’ve always loved to do my own nails. Having to go without for 47 days, once a year, is excruciating because I’ve convinced myself that men don’t want to hold hands with a woman who has dirty nails. So you’d think I’d be very happy to paint them again. I am, sort of.
Being able to paint them again means that fest is over for another ten months. Seven years ago, I didn’t know what this feeling was like. The end of fest meant that I took all of the pictures off of the wall, dusted them, put them back into the plastic bins in a very anal-retentive way (which is right down my alley) and then packed the plastic bins into the back of the huge automobile in a very anal-retentive way (again, no objections). I would then drive down the dirt road out to Highway 41, usually crying like a baby. Those tears were for the loss of an opportunity to experience the magic I saw outside of the booth every day. Wanting to be able to say that I knew those performers I saw out there, making people laugh, smiling all day long, even in rain.
Six years ago, I started a new tradition at this time of the year. I was granted the rare opportunity to be a part of what I had watched for seven years past (in case you’re confused with the counting at this point, I started working in a booth in 1999, then joined the cast and “worked” starting in 2006 through present. That’s where I get the seven years past [1999-2005] and seven years ago [2005] and six years ago [2006] and if you use numerology, you end up with the number 2, which has nothing to do with anything). Where was I? Oh yeah, six years ago, I started a new tradition of being able to come back on the day after and eat and laugh and pack up one more time with everyone. There would be the long fest/Minnesota good-byes, some tears, some inner thoughts of “Damn, I should have hooked up with him. Maybe next year”. There would then be a good week’s worth of depression. I never seem to appreciate at the time, how much I would miss the crowds of people, the impossibility of ever being alone except maybe in the privy, the inability to make a statement without someone else having a retort, until it’s gone and I’m suddenly surrounded by silence…and memories.
Every meal is empty without someone sitting next to me on a bench with a good portion of dust on our food. Every evening is just darkness without someone beside you, walking across a patch of land dotted with decrepit buildings and beautiful sunsets, with one hand on your pass, ready to show the people with yellow flags. Scotch never tastes as good as it does being poured out of someone’s belt into a dusty, dirty, small wooden chalice-shaped shot glass as people file by you to get to their cars, maybe wondering to themselves “I knew it, they all do drink here!”. I’m considering hiring Rich Shepardson to show up outside of my bedroom window every morning just to sing the last few bars of “Swing Low…”. That rattles my rib cage….in a good way. I’d like Rich to bring Neal Skoy with him to run into my tree trunk in my backyard.
I suddenly want one more chance to walk down the lane and mistakenly step on someone’s bit and feel really stupid for a few minutes until someone mistakenly does it to me. I want to walk in the parade while a pirate tries to snatch my glass out of my hand and I swing it carelessly about.
Making someone laugh is the best thing I could think to do for them. I feel silly giving people cards. Giving presents can be fun but it’s kind of fleeting. Getting them to laugh is priceless and everlasting. Having been on the receiving end during the lowest points in my life, I can tell you that it is priceless and everlasting. If anyone uses that statement against me at contract time, I’ll beat the hell out of you.
The kind of humor that is found at fest doesn’t always translate in the same way outside of fest. At least, the reaction isn’t as free. Your co-workers will correctly give disapproving head shakes because the employee manual says so, but I think that deep down inside, there is a guffaw lurking.
Finding the opportunity to be able to do this at this specific location is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that transcends management, ownership, parking conditions, and heat. I’ve met the most incredibly talented, generous, caring people, all of whom continue to let me be around them.
Mandy Patinkin, in a Princess Bride documentary, talked about what it meant to be a part of that movie. At the end of his statement, he tears up and tries to say, without his voice cracking, that “I never dreamed I’d get to be in a movie like this. I never have since and I guess you’re lucky in this life, if you ever get close to something like this.” I couldn’t agree more.
So now I will paint my nails and dream of what could be in another ten months.
Brian’s Song:
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
…Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
Within a dream. (Earnest Dowson)
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)
I’ve always loved to do my own nails. Having to go without for 47 days, once a year, is excruciating because I’ve convinced myself that men don’t want to hold hands with a woman who has dirty nails. So you’d think I’d be very happy to paint them again. I am, sort of.
Being able to paint them again means that fest is over for another ten months. Seven years ago, I didn’t know what this feeling was like. The end of fest meant that I took all of the pictures off of the wall, dusted them, put them back into the plastic bins in a very anal-retentive way (which is right down my alley) and then packed the plastic bins into the back of the huge automobile in a very anal-retentive way (again, no objections). I would then drive down the dirt road out to Highway 41, usually crying like a baby. Those tears were for the loss of an opportunity to experience the magic I saw outside of the booth every day. Wanting to be able to say that I knew those performers I saw out there, making people laugh, smiling all day long, even in rain.
Six years ago, I started a new tradition at this time of the year. I was granted the rare opportunity to be a part of what I had watched for seven years past (in case you’re confused with the counting at this point, I started working in a booth in 1999, then joined the cast and “worked” starting in 2006 through present. That’s where I get the seven years past [1999-2005] and seven years ago [2005] and six years ago [2006] and if you use numerology, you end up with the number 2, which has nothing to do with anything). Where was I? Oh yeah, six years ago, I started a new tradition of being able to come back on the day after and eat and laugh and pack up one more time with everyone. There would be the long fest/Minnesota good-byes, some tears, some inner thoughts of “Damn, I should have hooked up with him. Maybe next year”. There would then be a good week’s worth of depression. I never seem to appreciate at the time, how much I would miss the crowds of people, the impossibility of ever being alone except maybe in the privy, the inability to make a statement without someone else having a retort, until it’s gone and I’m suddenly surrounded by silence…and memories.
Every meal is empty without someone sitting next to me on a bench with a good portion of dust on our food. Every evening is just darkness without someone beside you, walking across a patch of land dotted with decrepit buildings and beautiful sunsets, with one hand on your pass, ready to show the people with yellow flags. Scotch never tastes as good as it does being poured out of someone’s belt into a dusty, dirty, small wooden chalice-shaped shot glass as people file by you to get to their cars, maybe wondering to themselves “I knew it, they all do drink here!”. I’m considering hiring Rich Shepardson to show up outside of my bedroom window every morning just to sing the last few bars of “Swing Low…”. That rattles my rib cage….in a good way. I’d like Rich to bring Neal Skoy with him to run into my tree trunk in my backyard.
I suddenly want one more chance to walk down the lane and mistakenly step on someone’s bit and feel really stupid for a few minutes until someone mistakenly does it to me. I want to walk in the parade while a pirate tries to snatch my glass out of my hand and I swing it carelessly about.
Making someone laugh is the best thing I could think to do for them. I feel silly giving people cards. Giving presents can be fun but it’s kind of fleeting. Getting them to laugh is priceless and everlasting. Having been on the receiving end during the lowest points in my life, I can tell you that it is priceless and everlasting. If anyone uses that statement against me at contract time, I’ll beat the hell out of you.
The kind of humor that is found at fest doesn’t always translate in the same way outside of fest. At least, the reaction isn’t as free. Your co-workers will correctly give disapproving head shakes because the employee manual says so, but I think that deep down inside, there is a guffaw lurking.
Finding the opportunity to be able to do this at this specific location is a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity that transcends management, ownership, parking conditions, and heat. I’ve met the most incredibly talented, generous, caring people, all of whom continue to let me be around them.
Mandy Patinkin, in a Princess Bride documentary, talked about what it meant to be a part of that movie. At the end of his statement, he tears up and tries to say, without his voice cracking, that “I never dreamed I’d get to be in a movie like this. I never have since and I guess you’re lucky in this life, if you ever get close to something like this.” I couldn’t agree more.
So now I will paint my nails and dream of what could be in another ten months.
Brian’s Song:
They are not long, the weeping and the laughter,
Love and desire and hate:
I think they have no portion in us after
We pass the gate.
They are not long, the days of wine and roses:
…Out of a misty dream
Our path emerges for awhile, then closes
Within a dream. (Earnest Dowson)
Our revels now are ended. These our actors,
As I foretold you, were all spirits and
Are melted into air, into thin air:
And, like the baseless fabric of this vision,
The cloud-capp’d towers, the gorgeous palaces,
The solemn temples, the great globe itself,
Yea, all which it inherit, shall dissolve
And, like this insubstantial pageant faded,
Leave not a rack behind. We are such stuff
As dreams are made on, and our little life
Is rounded with a sleep. (Shakespeare, The Tempest)
Tuesday, September 20, 2011
Juggling as a metaphor for life
Question #1 - Guess who now has three balls with which she’s trying to keep two in the air at any given time? Me, that’s who. Yes, I proudly purchased three balls designed to withstand an adequate amount of use throughout varying environmental conditions over several years.
Question #2 – Guess what builds up quad muscles and helps to stretch out hamstrings? Learning how to juggle, that’s what (all that bending-over to pick up dropped balls.)
This is not my first attempt at learning how to juggle. I’ve read several online “manuals”, complete with drawings, on the subject. I’ve asked the MRF Juggling School plus several other free-lance MRF jugglers for the secret and hopefully quick+surefire method to learning how to juggle. I’ve even paid a guy $35 to learn how to juggle. A co-performer also paid the same guy $35 but it actually worked for him.
Here’s the part I have difficulty with: just exactly how am I supposed to catch these balls without looking where they’re going to land? Do you ever see a juggler looking down at his hands? No. I find this incredulous. How can you possibly know where these balls are going to land? You don’t! Sure, you can assume that they’ll land in your hands but you don’t KNOW that they’re going to land there. I could trust in differential and quadratic equations of trajectories and hope these are correct but how do I know they’re correct all the time? And further, which equation should I go with? What if Galileo was wrong?? WHAT IF HE WAS WRONG?? Then I’ll never catch those fucking balls!
There are far too many factors involved in knowing for certain where the damn ball will land. I’d have to estimate the launch velocity, launch angle, trajectory height, and the positions of the launch and landing points. I can’t do that all in a few seconds. I can’t even do that all in a few days.
Wikipedia has a cute little animation showing a stick figure juggling 3 balls in what I believe is the common beginner’s pattern. I could also mention here that it is referred to as a Siteswap 3 but part of me feels that term was added to the Wikipedia page by some professional juggler in an attempt to get the newbies to repeat a silly sounding phrase. I would like to point out the lack of environmental factors in this animation like wind velocity, differing weights of the balls, and surrounding distractions. I also think this page illustrates how we can be fooled by the internet into thinking life is much easier than it really is.
Supposing I could decide on a calculation that I trusted, I would then have to contend with Zeno’s paradox that motion is an illusion. In order to move from point A to point B, I would first have to throw the ball half way, but in order to reach that half-way point, I’d have to get the ball half-way to the half-way point. Because there are an infinite number of points to cross before getting to Point B, I’ll never actually get around to throwing the ball up. In fact, I’d never get around to picking the balls up because I’d have to bend half-way, but first I’d have to bend half-way to bending half-way….oh nevermind.
Louis Pasteur said that “chance favors a prepared mind”. It seems to me that catching a ball would favor a prepared hand but I can’t figure out how to prepare my hands for this.
I think there is a secret mind-control method to juggling. Jugglers have learned how to make the balls go where they want purely with the power of their minds. Microscopic laser beams are coming out of their eyes and directing the balls where to go...and then Satan is making sure the balls land in their hands.
Juggling may be the cruelest trick to play on an obsessive-compulsive person. I really want to catch the balls RIGHT NOW but I want to know exactly how to catch the balls RIGHT NOW. I think the stupidest thing I ever did was to purchase three balls designed to withstand an adequate amount of use throughout varying environmental conditions over several years.
Question #2 – Guess what builds up quad muscles and helps to stretch out hamstrings? Learning how to juggle, that’s what (all that bending-over to pick up dropped balls.)
This is not my first attempt at learning how to juggle. I’ve read several online “manuals”, complete with drawings, on the subject. I’ve asked the MRF Juggling School plus several other free-lance MRF jugglers for the secret and hopefully quick+surefire method to learning how to juggle. I’ve even paid a guy $35 to learn how to juggle. A co-performer also paid the same guy $35 but it actually worked for him.
Here’s the part I have difficulty with: just exactly how am I supposed to catch these balls without looking where they’re going to land? Do you ever see a juggler looking down at his hands? No. I find this incredulous. How can you possibly know where these balls are going to land? You don’t! Sure, you can assume that they’ll land in your hands but you don’t KNOW that they’re going to land there. I could trust in differential and quadratic equations of trajectories and hope these are correct but how do I know they’re correct all the time? And further, which equation should I go with? What if Galileo was wrong?? WHAT IF HE WAS WRONG?? Then I’ll never catch those fucking balls!
There are far too many factors involved in knowing for certain where the damn ball will land. I’d have to estimate the launch velocity, launch angle, trajectory height, and the positions of the launch and landing points. I can’t do that all in a few seconds. I can’t even do that all in a few days.
Wikipedia has a cute little animation showing a stick figure juggling 3 balls in what I believe is the common beginner’s pattern. I could also mention here that it is referred to as a Siteswap 3 but part of me feels that term was added to the Wikipedia page by some professional juggler in an attempt to get the newbies to repeat a silly sounding phrase. I would like to point out the lack of environmental factors in this animation like wind velocity, differing weights of the balls, and surrounding distractions. I also think this page illustrates how we can be fooled by the internet into thinking life is much easier than it really is.
Supposing I could decide on a calculation that I trusted, I would then have to contend with Zeno’s paradox that motion is an illusion. In order to move from point A to point B, I would first have to throw the ball half way, but in order to reach that half-way point, I’d have to get the ball half-way to the half-way point. Because there are an infinite number of points to cross before getting to Point B, I’ll never actually get around to throwing the ball up. In fact, I’d never get around to picking the balls up because I’d have to bend half-way, but first I’d have to bend half-way to bending half-way….oh nevermind.
Louis Pasteur said that “chance favors a prepared mind”. It seems to me that catching a ball would favor a prepared hand but I can’t figure out how to prepare my hands for this.
I think there is a secret mind-control method to juggling. Jugglers have learned how to make the balls go where they want purely with the power of their minds. Microscopic laser beams are coming out of their eyes and directing the balls where to go...and then Satan is making sure the balls land in their hands.
Juggling may be the cruelest trick to play on an obsessive-compulsive person. I really want to catch the balls RIGHT NOW but I want to know exactly how to catch the balls RIGHT NOW. I think the stupidest thing I ever did was to purchase three balls designed to withstand an adequate amount of use throughout varying environmental conditions over several years.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)