This poor young woman is literally the New York Times’ picture of unhealthy eating

Poor, poor Elizabeth Bartels. Looks like she went out to lunch with a friend one day. Judging by the sunlight shining behind her, it was a lovely day. Her day was maybe made extra exciting because she was photographed by someone from the New York Times.

She now seems to be the face of American unhealthy eating. Not so flattering an association. I know newspapers reuse photos and variations of photos all the time, but if I were her, I’d feel horrible and immediately begin eating only lettuce springrolls filled with chopped lettuce, served alongside a lettuce smoothie. Maybe a celery stick, too, if I felt like treating myself.

The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp

I still care about cryptozoology and I still care about things from the South. Here’s a lesser known guy who has even been made into a Yu-Gi-Oh! card. That’s big-time in the early 21st century. The Lizard Man of Scape Ore Swamp!

[image source]

No barf bags at the MRI

I was given these socks and a robe yesterday at my MRI. Even though I knew that many people with a variety of maladies had worn them before me, they felt great. My feet were warm, cushioned, and the rubber nubbins of the Caresteps made walking around on the slippery tile floor really care-free.

Limping to Boston

New motivation to blog:  injury.

Though I told myself I would avoid writing about my sporting life here, I have very little else on my mind. As we might sort of know, I qualified for the Boston marathon. I somehow beat the registration deadline, and now receive emails hocking Boston marathon branded goods. I also injured my knee last month.

I’ve been in PT lately and I’m getting an MRI today. Though the marathon is only three months away, I haven’t been training at all. It’ll be interesting. We’ll see what happens, and I’ll talk about it here

Speech BINGO and con(fidence)

At my current job, I’m privy to some pretty neat opportunities. Five weeks vacation, for example, and a convenient cafeteria. One of the most unique privileges, I feel, is a program called Friday Lunch. It’s a weekly speaker series, most usually hosted by a certain popular columnist, in which speakers give brief opening remarks on a topic of their choice, with the remainder of the lunch dedicated to discussion in this room full of, you know, accomplished smarty pantses.

I’m sure I can’t and should not discuss what goes on behind these doors. I don’t even know if I’m allowed to say who I’ve (sort of) had lunch with. But today’s lunch could have made for a marvelous game of Speech BINGO. This is that silly game when you and bunch of friends pass out a BINGO card and you mark when an overused catchphrase is said. Today’s included “No one knows more about ___ than ___[often ‘you’], but I think…” or dropping in a question-asker’s first name sometime in the first two sentences of an answer, and the inevitable similes comparing legislative battles to football. It was a pretty standard display of someone trying to make an impersonal forum personal by making things intimately relatable.

This might sound like I’m calling the speaker out, but I’m not: how can you call someone out for doing that? It was just a very clear example of the communication strategy of bringing the conversation somewhere you’re comfortable (e.g. stalling or flattery or rehashing really really old jokes). I’m sure we all repeat patterns in our language depending on the social situation, and speaking to small room full of people eager to make salient points regarding a topic of your choice is certainly a unique one. Who could be blamed for repititiously reaching into the same box of comfortable phrases in that setting?

It’s like interviewing for jobs. If you’ve ever been in the unfortunate position to interview for jobs repeatedly, you sort of end up learning all the twists that interviewers throw at you; you “get good at interviewing” if you’re not always the most naturally charming and intelligent person in the room.

There’s no point here, other than that it’s interesting to note these dynamics in people who are advanced in their fields. There are plenty of things that separate politicians, academics, businessfolk, “the successful” from a shlub like me. But perhaps recognizing, absorbing, and emulating their reactions and patterns is fundamental to being a con man something eminently doable that just could lead one towards some path of “success” (whatever that may be).

Wesleyan and the indie kids

Das Racist has a hilarious interview in the latest New York Times magazine. I know the whole Wesleyan indie kid thing  has been written about before, but I’m always asked whether I overlapped with any of these folks (to answer: I recognized Andrew VanWyngarden’s name from a music class or two, but he only looks vaguely familiar in photos).

What’s curious to me is that all these acts (maybe minus the slightly older Santigold) are coming out of a time when Wesleyan is supposed to be, like, totally mainstream, man (lamestream, as DannyMo would say). As a freshman I heard all about how Wesleyan was not as crazy as it used to be. The whole Keep Wesleyan Weird thing continues, I guess, and recent-grad friends say it’s only getting ‘worse.’ (i.e. fewer naked parties, more collared shirts purchased at retail prices)

But then why all these “kool kidz” coming out of the woodwork? No one from my years is all indie-kid kool. Is this a paradox?

update/answer: totally not a paradox if you think these indie kids are assholes and everyone before them was doing real work. whoops. duh.

Surprise!

I started this blog around this time last year and wrote almost non-stop for two months before my productivity somewhat rapidly petered out.

Perhaps it’s a change in seasons thing, but I’ve got like five posts lined up for over the next few days, and I’ve written all of them in the last 24 hours. Whoa. I’m so sorry that I feel a desire to share.

That time of life: friends’ weddings years

Last month I had a rare wedding-filled weekend: I went up to Brooklyn for a Saturday wedding then drove down to the Eastern shore of Maryland for another wedding the next day. At one point I could have theoretically been another +1 the week prior  and before even then I was joining my good friend Lisa, fetching her batteries, eating cake, etc throughout the spring.

I am also a registered wedding officiant in the City of New York, and so I’m supposed to be paying attention to how people do these things, keeping an eye on ceremonies and what the officiant says.

I don’t want to say too much because I want to save some thoughts for whatever I might say at the wedding (I also sign the marriage license! LOL!). But do people remember anything other than the reception?

I don’t think I like that idea, but I guess there are only a few ways you can talk about love in the context of a wedding ceremony. Unitarians sound like expository Hallmark cards, the Catholics talk about gee oh dee, others go through the tropes of new vs. old love or being best friends/companions. Can a wedding ceremony make someone cry beyond the fact that it’s a wedding ceremony? You’re sort of destined to be generic, like giving a graduation keynote speech if you aren’t someone that isn’t actually famous. Is any officiant going to blow anyone’s mind or do/say something actually riveting?

I will soon try to find out, but till then, I can give some advice on being a good +1. Watch a lot of old Soul Train videos. Anyone with a sense of rhythm can do many of those moves: don’t be afraid of the occasional high kick. Dress if not well, dress interestingly. Ask your friend’s friends lots of questions, because everyone is a little narcissistic and likes talking about themselves. Let your jokes fail or call yourself out on bad ones because I’ve noticed some guys don’t like it when ‘new guy’ gets to be ‘new funny guy:’ important thing is to throw things out there, but don’t force it. Don’t be the first one on the dance floor, but make it a point to walk across the floor with your date when no one is yet on it and shake your legs a bit to plant the idea that it’s never too early to start the party. Would you rather be the person standing over your friend’s shoulder sipping gin, looking slightly creepy, or would you rather be ‘that guy’ dancing with grandma or the little kid?  We know there is always that guy or girl, and it might as well be you: remember you’ve got nothing to lose as +1 as long as you aren’t a douche — that means only asking your date to dance because you’re there for them, though of course you can dance with others if they ask you to. It’s also incredibly, incredibly hard to hit on the photographers, but it’s not an impossibility.

Yes, a +1 is there to be a good date, but I think a good +1 is there to shake up a party a bit. It’s someone who makes the party something more than just a fancy-clothed version of what you did in college or on the weekends. If you’re a friend of mine, I think you’ve probably got that in you already.

This annoys me a bit: I wanted to talk about ceremony more, but only talked about the party. But I suppose that’s appropriate and true-to-life. Still, if you have any thoughts about making a ceremony interesting, I’m all ears.

Smiling should not be a new car option

Now that we’re well into spring and road trip season is nearly upon us, I would just like to say something about the sunroof/moonroof (Sunroofs are opaque. Moonroofs are transparent to let the moonlight in, what us young folks usually think of a sunroofs.).

A car is not complete without one.

I guess that’s all. It just shouldn’t be an option on cars these days, and by these days I mean both in the summer and in this, you know, epoch.

This isn’t something you can afford to be indifferent about. There’s the old Louis CK thing about how everything is amazing and yet nobody’s happy, and a moonroof just really makes people happy. This is important! Mandatory! We are not happy enough and this will help, I swear it.

If you’re going to be happy in a car in the summer for more than 30 minutes (It’s not a road trip if it’s <2 hours and even on a day-to-day basis, it’s pretty likely given the average American commutes 25 minutes each way in a car), your sunglasses are going to complain about the taupe ceiling upholstery of your import. It’s worse than wearing sunglasses at night because the sun is supposed to be right there, on top of you.

You put the windows down, right? Maybe you stick your head out the window if you’re in shotgun? Maybe you do that wavy thing with your hand, even if you drive stick and aren’t supposed to hold your left hand out the window? But then maybe you don’t on the highway as it’s loud and bad for gas mileage. Moonroof, obviously.

Convertible? Arguably douchey. More importantly, it drowns out the country music you’re supposed to be listening to on your road trip.

The only thing that’s recently been made known to me that could possibly beat a good open roof is pictured below, but that’s conditional based on gender. My friend K.Bo drove one of these, a 1978 T Top Camaro, in high school. She is a she. If any guy drives this, maybe too cool, maybe a douche (hard to say).

I don’t know how I went 28 years without knowing about T-tops, but not too noisy and obviously plenty of sun and air.

Anyway, this has gone on long enough and if you’ve spent any time on a road trip with an open sunroof you’ll know I’m right. Blah blah blah, sun and vitamin D (Oprah’s on the bandwagon… not a good thing?) and SAD and more silliness like stargazing at scenic highway overlooks. These things are great.

Losing my core readership

I haven’t posted in over a month and was told that I would lose my core readership. I believe this has already happened, but that’s okay. This is mostly just exercise anyway, not really showing off. I think I’ve focused my energies elsewhere. This is personal stuff that is boring, but it includes running that marathon in a pretty swift 3:09:36. This just makes me admire more the people who are able to be very good at many things. If I had the energy, I’d link to articles about how willpower is finite and expendable and then speculate that I make for a poor polymath because I feel that despite ambitions, I’m only ever able to focus on one major life goal at a time. If we can classify serious athletic training under the same category as other creative goals (due to focus and energy required), then it makes sense that I’ve fallen off the wagon. Time to get back on.