Journalism - Not all that awesome

From this column about what it takes to be a good reporter:

"Good reporters are committed to telling the story. Associated Press reporter Terry Anderson ignored his boss's advice to leave war-torn Lebanon; he felt that he had to stay. He was kidnapped in 1985 and spent 6 1/2 years in brutal captivity."

Yeah...I guess I don't got what it takes.

What up? It's been a while since we rapped. Maybe that's because I've been spending all my online time at this awesome Saved by the Bell site! I read this entire blog way faster than I should admit. It is the "Catcher in the Rye" of blogs. Uh...if Catcher was about making sarcastic comments about an early '90s show.*

The great thing about Saved by the Bell, besides the fact that they learn Driver's Ed using a golf cart in the gymnasium, is that I loved the show to the point where, if no one was at home after school and it came on, I would dance on the coffee table and play air guitar to the opening theme music. I thought these people were the coolest and the funniest, and it was pretty much what high school was like. High school was cool not because of popularity, but because everyone did really rad things, like, all the time! The show couldn't depict popularity, because there were only like seven extras at the most at any point. But I attribute this sense more to the set: it always seemed like Zack and the gang were hanging out in one tiny little corner of the school. You know, the stairs were in the background, leading down, and that was where the cohort was. And they had a crappy corner of the school too, since it was right next to the principal's office. I always had the sense that in all the other corners of the school, other rad stuff was happening, and we the viewer were only exposed to the radness of this one section.

So the real joy of SBTB to me was this cohesive unit that stayed together...er...except when the cast changed without explanation. But they went and got summer jobs together, they went to college together, they hung out at the Max all the time, they were there for each other when Jessie got hooked on caffeine pills.

I really thought there was some brilliant way to tie all that in to the nostalgia I've been feeling lately, but I don't think I'm clever enough. Point is, lately I've been really wanting everyone I know to live in the same city. I know we all have our own lives and grad schools and jobs and children (!) and dreams to attend to, but it really is inconvenient that the world is so large and so many of the people I know and love are attending to its different corners.

Right now, I am "Seattle Matt" and when I want to go visit friends in Ballard, I am Seattle Matt, and when I go to Rainier Valley, I am Seattle Matt, and when I go to Capitol Hill, I am Seattle Matt...With A Little Bit Of Gay. When I'm back in Indiana, I can be High School Matt. When I am in Pittsburgh, I can be College Matt. There are so many Matts out there, but I have to drastically change my geography in order to be any of them!

But really what I want, rather than just a manual transmission to shift to any Matt I feel like, is to touch different points of time in life as much as possible. My friend Roselyn recently visited, and there was a moment when we and some others were walking through Discovery Park in the drizzly evening, when, just like that, we could have been at Ox Bow or Shanklin back in Indiana. There are so many bitter and sweet moments in the history of our friendship, and I cannot stand to be so far from them. I wish I could group us all up and put us in a city...I don't care which one. Even Tacoma.

So, I guess my point is, no one should be allowed to move and all the cities should have walls around them.


*Which it sort of is? I mean, "Catcher in the Rye" is basically a guy making sarcastic comments about all those goddamn phonies out there. Substitute "goddamn phonies" for zany plot contrivances and you pretty much have the sbtb blog.

Kites and Kowboys

Everyone will be happy to know that at this year's International Kite Festival on the Washington coast, there will be prizes. And these prizes are presented at a banquet. And the banquet has a cowboy theme.

"To add some more fun to this year’s World Kite Museum WSIKF Award’s Banquet and auction, there will be a theme. We’ll all get to be even sillier!

Starting at the door, you’ll be welcomed by the sheriff. Unless you want a fine, you need to wear some piece of Wild West gear. Nothing fancy – could be a bandana around your neck, a cowboy hat or boots or big buckled belt, a sheriff’s badge, handcuffs, fake snake, sunbonnet, Minnie Pearl hat, etc., etc. There will be prizes, so get as elaborate as you want. A jail will be available in case you break the law (not on purpose of course!). So have a friend with funds to get you out of jail.

One of the best parts of the auction is to see someone excited and thrilled about a kite item you donated that they won. The other best thing is getting an item that you had your eye on – and all of this helps support the World Kite Museum.

Watch the web page for pony express online updates. If you have ideas that inexpensively and easily can be incorporated, let us know. No shootouts, no, no, no!"

The saddest part of this event is that after a shooting at the Folklife Festival, the expressed prohibition of firearms at a Kite Festival is completely justified.

Estelle Getty died today, causing this obituary to happen.

"In similar vein of take-no-prisoners elder, Getty played Sylvester Stallone's domineering mother, Tutti Bomowski, in "Stop! Or My Mom Will Shoot." Generically, it was a battling-buddy movie whose comic thrust was the diminutive Getty's bossing around her L.A. lawman son."

How necessary is it, on a 1-10 scale, to sum up what the Stallone movie was about?

SAD

Time for a blogpology*: I haven't updated this in a bit. I hate when people apologize about not writing in their blogs - I mean, a blog is just an online journal of sorts, and if you don't journal for a week or a month or whatever, no one should be like "way to not type out any observations or stories, jackass." So this is the last blogpology I will issue...savor it. Link to it, so you can, at any moment you feel you are owed an apology, go to it.

I have a good excuse: I, like many people living in Seattle, suffer from Seasonal Affective Disorder. Most people who are afflicted with SAD feel its numbing effects in the winter, while they are driving to work in the dark, working in your dark cubicle, driving home in the dark, watching reruns of Everybody Loves Raymond in the dark. It's a lack of sunlight.

But with me, I suffer from SAD during the summer. I wake up and it's gorgeous out and I want to watch DVDs. It's noon and the sky is cloudless and I want to play another game of Scrabulous. It's after work and Green Lake is full of young people exercising and playing volleyball and bicycling around and I just want to blog blog blog. I hate nice weather. It's great to look at and all, and it's nice I don't have to put on a jacket everywhere I go, but beyond that it's just the worst.

The problem with nice weather is it's so full of unused potential, you know? It is great for everything I'm not doing: Going on a date, mountain biking, sailing, living in a cottage in the Italian countryside, driving a convertible, white water river rafting, chopping down trees, etc. (Oh yes, I do enjoy chopping down a good tree. For the sake of the environment, I control this impulse. But if I had my way, look out Oakie, you know what I'm saying? Be aware, Poplar. I'm coming for you.)

Instead, I am working in an office or driving in traffic. But the WORST is that even when it's nice in my free time, I'm doing something and it's just not that great, you know? Like I'm riding my bike, and I'm thinking, I'm gonna have to say "On your left!" to that schmoe. Or I'm writing an awesome play in my notebook while sitting in a park and there's a family walking by and they absolutely love each other and the kids are playing and I'm thinking "An ant is crawling on my shoe. If he crawls on my leg he is a dead ant. The shoe is fine, but the leg is a no-no. Then he's in biting range, and that is when I'm bringing the hammer down. He's on the lace! Should I do a pre-emptive swat, or let him make his move? Come on, ant, what's it gonna be? How are you--WHAT THE--! DAMN MOSQUITO JUST BIT MY NECK! Stupid ant was just distracting me...they're working together! They are in cahoots! CAHOOTS!"

You know? I can't enjoy the nice weather, I can never just sit back and enjoy it. I like life, even though it's miserable, you want to know why? Everyone's miserable. The mother at the grocery store with three screaming children is miserable, the grocery checkout dude making $10 an hour is miserable, AND the super rich, super beautiful, super talented MOVIE STAR is in the magazine at the grocery checkout line talking about HER MISERABLE LIFE. Everyone is miserable, and we're all gonna die. It's like this guarantee, this warm fuzzy existentialism.

I read that in The Stranger, in April there was an issue with this cover story. The author basically makes a list of generalizations about Seattle based on a few friends and a couple book readings (which seems kind of, well, a pretty insubstantial subject for a cover story, but whatever). Anyway, the author says this:

"I feel like most people in Seattle have "given up on life" due to a comprehensive knowledge about existentialism but in a "good" way that doesn't feel bad at all. They wake up, go to work copywriting shampoo advertisements, go home, lie in fetal positions facing the back of their sofas, and feel beautiful and existentially awesome."

THAT IS EXACTLY RIGHT.

And this beautiful existentialism fits, usually, with Seattle's weather. It was weather that made me want to move here, actually. I was walking outside last September in Evans City, Pennsylvania, and it was raining, and I was like: "Me and the rain get along pretty good. I should move to the most famous rain capital of America." And so I did.

But it's really tough when you got all that sunlight and frolicking and hopefulness out there, like the past two weeks, oh, it's been terribly, awfully, horrifically gorgeous outside. I can't stand it.

I don't know how to cure Summer SAD. In the winter you go into a room with a light. I'm not joking - that's the cure for SAD. You stand in front of a light. It's the best cure ever. But for the summer, I don't know. I guess stand in the show for an hour with the lights off and play Radiohead? What if I get pruny?

I just don't like the heat, okay? I feel sluggish, I get sunburned, the bugs are all out. People always want to "do things" and "go out." I spend more money, gas is more expensive, traffic is worse. There's more pedestrians. TV sucks. Kids are all home and running around, and it's plain hot! Argh...

If you need me, I'll be in the shower.


*Blogpology: At the beginning of the post I thought I had invented this word! I was so excited to name the phenomenon of apologizing about not blogging, since most blogs do that! But then I Googled it and found out it's been used like a million times, so my ego became deflated. The same thing happened when my friend was pitching bank slogan ideas and I suggested "Get More Bank For Your Buck! (TM)", which I was super excited about as an idea until we looked it up and, yeah, just about every bank in the English-speaking world has used this slogan.

There's this interesting article about a businessman on his way to jail who faked his suicide. Most interesting to me is how the police started getting suspicious:

On the day that he was to report, Mr. Israel’s abandoned GMC Envoy was found along a shoulder of the Bear Mountain Bridge near the Hudson River with the message “suicide is painless” written in dust on the hood. The keys and a bottle of pills were still in the car.

When Mr. Israel’s body failed to turn up and the message turned out to be the theme song of ”M*A*S*H,” the authorities began to suspect he was on the run.

So...if your suicide note makes a pop-culture reference, the police are going to start asking questions. Note to self: If deciding to fake own death, don't write in the suicide letter "This wasn't my day, my month, or even my year."

LARPers vs. Law

What is better than a bike commute that takes you through a park? A bike commute that takes you through a park where a LARP is! A LARP is a Live Action Role Playing game, and a LARPer is someone who dresses up in awesome fantasy gear and then they fight other LARPers.


On Sunday I was riding through the park when I came upon a group of four LARPers, in the midst of a full plastic broadsword brawl. There are many terrible things you can come across as a cyclist - SUVs with giant blind spots, little children who get in your way with their stupid tricycles, etc. But then there are things/people you come across that are absolutely amazing! Midday plastic broadsword battles betwixt people old enough to vote is definitely in the latter category.

These guys and girls (yes, that's right! Girls!) were battling, while a couple smaller bands of LARPers were off a little way and I think one had a plastic crossbow. Man, the broadsword guys were totally into it though - it was a pitched battle. Two female joggers had paused their jogging to watch - I am pretty sure that amped up the male LARPers so this was one epic fight!

I rode on after a bit...not wanting to catch a stray arrow or Elvish curse. I rode down the trail - it is a dirt/gravel mix trail about the width of a car - a little ways when who do I spy snaking my direction? Johnny Law! A Seattle police cruiser inching over the gravel - sirens off. He was clearly in stealth mode - also possibly did not want to startle any dog walkers. I stopped and let him pass. (Although I am fairly sure that if I were the hero of an epic '80s adventure movie where a group of misfit 10-year-olds have to save their neighborhood from "the man", I could have popped a wheelie and jumped the cruiser.) I must say there is nothing like pausing on your bicycle to let a powder blue police car skulk through the forest - it seems like a very Northwest thing. In Pittsburgh the police only take biking trails to avoid all the city's potholes (hey-o!)

So you know what this means: The Seattle police were going after the LARPers. I don't know who fired the first shot, but underground live action roleplaying has always contended with Law and Order. (Which is upsetting because both groups should get along. Both have a rigid respect for the rules, and also, it must take the same amount of fearlessness to wear this as it does to do this. )





So what did Johnny Law want from Johnny Lives-With-His-Parents? Was the Man cracking down on Elfen contraband? Can fighting during a LARP be considered street fighting? What about street-spellcasting? Even if it's questionable to stage broadsword battles in the middle of a public thoroughfare, do the Seattle Police have jurisdiction over events that take place in the imagination? All good questions.

Sadly, I never saw what happened when the Boys in Blue met the Men in Tights. I was going to turn around and witness the inevitable conflict, but I was afraid I would get rounded up with the LARPers. Once they put my name into their police computers, certain flags like the number of Magic: The Gathering cards I own would pop up, and I'd be taken downtown with the usual suspects.

Near my work I pass a tanning salon called Seattle Sun Tan. If a farmer's tan is what happens when you are out in the field all day with your shirt on, what is a Seattle tan? I imagine they have two packages:

1) The Rainier - suit up in a North Face jacket, stand in a chilled room and face a wind machine for 2-hour sessions. A sunlamp will burn your face, but you won't feel it since the wind's going.

2) The Eastside - you sit at a laptop for 175 hours, editing code and sneaking a game of Solitaire. For $50 extra they'll use a blue airbrush to highlight your veins.

Letter!

This is a letter to my friend Meredith, who I would describe as, "the shit." Not in a negative way, but in like, a really awesome way. We write blog letters to each other, like pen pals, but without all that postage and penmanship. Her blog is linked to the right.

Dear Meredith,

I have started a new blog. The reasons for this are threefold:

1. I feel it was time for a "fresh start" in my blogging world.

2. ...

So I guess there is only one reason for the new blog. So help me, I love the word "threefold."

Yesterday my housemate asked: what is your blog about? I do not know. But I plan on keeping with the regular letter-writing to you, my blogging compatriot.

Now I supposed would be a good time to explain how I am drinking tea AND a smoothie at the same time. Basically I got to work and made some tea, then some co-workers went to the local overpriced smoothie shop and I bought some awesome smoothie. Result: two beverages! I am double fisting! On my left, the harmonious mix of Super Irish Breakfast Black Tea, or as I like to call it, black Irish tea. (I bought this tea specifically because it said "Super." I still don't know how that adjective came within ten feet of tea marketing, but, lo, here it is.) On my right, a strawberry banana smoothie with flax oil! You cannot taste the flax oil, which is the best, because flax oil tastes a lot like super gross.

That is pretty much everything going on right now. So now there are some things I need to say to you, and these things are threefold:

1. The ring is sparkly, which is awesome! Congratulations not only on getting engaged, but on using the word "Sampsonistic". I honestly don't know which is more exciting - it is very close.

2. Jelly Belly logo tattoos should be available at all tattoo parlors, as well as heavily discounted.

3. I am pretty uncomfortable with the phrase "semi-constant reader." I do not see any way in which I am not a constant reader. I check your blog pretty much daily, and while instead of leaving comments I just blog about your blog, I am always a very involved participant in your wit and general spectacular-ness.

4. (Okay, so once again the "threefold" descriptor is inappropriate) Yes, let me know how the job search is going! Keep me updated!

Well, I imagine things are crazy right now, but have no fear! They only get crazier!

-Matt

Yelling is the hardest part

I am a pretty passive, wishy-washy guy. Well, sort of...I mean, not all the time, but most of time, you know? Kinda.

So it should come to no shock to you that I live in Seattle! It is the mecca of passivity, an emerald beacon shining forth the message: "Maybe you should move here or maybe not! You can if you want to!" One only needs to observe the hesitant turn-taking at any given four-way stop or the barista's half-smile when you have said-the-name-of-that-drink-wrong-but-it's-okay-I-know-what-you-meant-no-really-it's-fine-it's just-that's-a-really-stupid-way-to-say-it, to know that you are among my people.

Yessir! So it is upsetting to me (and maybe others?) that in order to ride your bike on the city's many trails and bike lanes, you need to yell DIRECTLY AT OTHER PEOPLE WHEN PASSING THEM! It is not the hills, the rain, the wind or the traffic that I find frustrating and demoralizing when I jump on my Mt. Trek bicycle. It is shouting "On your left."

There is no greater challenge to the passively-inclined than direct and clear communication.

And this happens to me a lot now, cause I started biking to work. You know when gas hits $4.20 that gas prices are high. (Ha ha! That was just a joke. Gas prices here are way higher than $4.20) So instead with my money I bought a helmet and some dorky pants. But it has led to this "on your left" issue.

Basically, the problem is you don't always need to say it. Sometimes there's enough room and things are relatively quiet and the person you're passing isn't veering around too much, so you just pass 'em. But most of the time you have to announce your presence, lest someone get startled and hit a tree, car or Starbucks franchise, whichever is closest.

Then there are all kinds of OTHER issues. I passed a child on a tricycle the other day. Little girl on tricycle doesn't know the rules! My "on your left" just caused her to stare up at me, thus steer toward me. PLUS sometimes you have to pass on the right! That means the person hears you, instinctively goes to the right to let you pass, but then realizes what you said, then remember the difference between left and right, then realize you're already up in their space, and then go the other way.

It's just nasty. I could always get a bell, the passive-aggressive note of cycling. Nothing like riding down the trail, and hearing, what is that? A distant chime! Someone is coming, but from where? By the time you've figured it out, the passer has already sullied the back of your calf with tread marks. Bells are dangerous little tinklers, and they're not loud enough.

So, it is with great trepidation that I continue yelling "on your left" to strangers, despite it being against my nature, and, in some ways, against my city.

Power Diet Update: some obstacles

Three days spent on this abs diet. So far...no abs. But it is early. Also I've hit some obstacles:

Obstacle 1: Bought plenty of ingredients, including tracking down ground flaxseed, and celebrated by eating leftover pizza.

Okay, well, I already had leftover pizza, and I paid for it, so I had to eat it. I mean...it's not going to last until I have shredded abs, so I pretty much had to eat it before "starting" the diet.

Obstacle 2: Free thought association does not reflect reality

I was going to get some soup at the local cafe for dinner on Monday (today). But then my housemates and I started to talk about how wonderful pho is. (I don't know how to have my keyboard make the correct letter there, but there's supposed to be, you know, like a little tail on the "o" there.) Anyway, I thought soup = good, and pho = soup, so let's go get some pho! But unfortunately...btw..there's way lots of sodium in pho.

Obstacle 3: Food preparation skills...sub-par





I made some really awesome meatballs! But I didn't cut the onions very fine, so the whopping chunks of onion split up the meatballs, and the meatballs kind of unravled/broke down in the pot, so instead of tiny neat little meatballs (the likes of which you see at Ikea - pictured to the admirable left), it kind of created something like a meat conglomerate (sort of like Meatwad - pictured to the deplorable right). Except while Meatwad is funny and insightful, what I created was more like soup. Oh well. Soup = good!

Obstacle 4: No real desire to eat vegetables

There are sections of the crazy power diet when it says "eat raw vegetables! As much as you want!" This is so you can find out firsthand that, while on the diet, you are not really hungry, you are just hungry for good food. Sure, you can make vegetables taste good. But I cannot. Perhaps that will be my mission before the next update.

You know, the "theatre"

As a playwright, and as a human being, I find punctuation very important. So important I will blog about it. So now I want to talk to you a little bit about exclamation points and quotation marks.


I love the exclamation point, but me and ! broke up after college when I worked as a reporter at a small town paper. We would get a lot of press releases from people who used our friend the exclamation point very liberally. If your press release is about a festival that celebrates turtles, you should not have any exclamation points in it. I began to see the exclamation point not as reflections of joy, but as superficial monikers cheaply attached to banality.

It was not until I discovered Dinosaur Comics that I once again recognized the exclamation point as amazing. Thanks, creator of Dinosaur Comics! I put your link on my list of links!

So, as a point of instruction, DO NOT use exclamation points if there is a town council or community even involved. DO use them if there are pictures of dinosaurs. Also, in instances of clever town mottos.

Quotation marks seem pretty easy: they quote something said or written. That's it. I don't know how it got around that you can use them when writing some kind of "slang" or "jargon." That just makes you sound unhip. And you should instead try to be hip.

Then there's this usage on Craigslist, in a post from this awesome dress-up group:

"Do you enjoy period clothing of various era (1920's, 30's 40's, etc), or maybe you enjoy the Victorian sort of lifestyle of "Teas", fancy clothing, men in top-hat and tails, etc.? Did you always enjoy "theatre" in school and have been looking for a classy outlet for your creativity?"

Why capitalize and quotate "Teas"? And by simply putting quotations around "theatre," the whole sentence reads like it's from a pamphlet called "Warning Signs Your Son Is Gay". ("Does your son enjoy 'theatre'?")



All I'm saying is, you can't use quotation marks or exclamation points willy-nilly. You CAN use quotation fingers in conversation pretty much all the time. That is hilarious.

Favorite barista...gone!

I've been in Seattle a year now. I've had some awesome Pacific Northwest experiences: hiking near Mt. Rainier, working in a coffee-roasting plant, turning down a job with a startup because the pay sucked...all pretty standard. But now I have felt the most bittersweet of Emerald City experiences. My favorite barista is gone!

She was a great coffee-maker, who always put quality above smoking dope in the break room. She was funny and laughed at my jokes (perhaps only for a tip? No...she was way classy). But most of all, she assisted with the construction on this:


This is, as if you can't tell, a space warrior/transformer Mr. Potato Head, complete with espresso fuel directly connected to the back of his formidable space mask. Any astronaut can tell you that if you are going to go into a space battle, you'll want some caffeine so you stay alert. I have never seen Mr. Potato Head transform, but one assumes that because of the truck facade on his chest plate (lower abdomen plate?) he would become a space truck.

So goodbye favorite barista! I never learned your name, but your coffee skills and lack of bitchiness will be remembered. And space warrior Mr. Potato Head will remain a steward of your cash register.

I am on a Power diet!

Dieting is not something I do. Until now!

It occurred to me during my latest Taco Bell run that I don't pay attention to what I eat. I know it is bad - no nutritional diet involves as much chips and salsa as I consume. I also recently took an online quiz (these are all-knowing quizzes) on my health, and the quiz said I needed like 6 servings of vegetables a day!! I currently get about one, and that is from the lettuce on my Subway sandwich. So I turned to the Internet for help.

I Googled "mens health" because I was concerned that plain old health would possibly give me namby-pamby solutions to my lack of vitamins, and/or lead me to a hospital site. I am not sick, Internet, I just need some fitness tips (or as I call them, "fips". No? Well, you can have your jargon and I can have mine). The first thing that popped up was the Men's Health site, which is a pretty extreme manliness site about getting rock hard abs, grilling up awesome meats, and having some good sex. But they had a nutrition tab, so I followed that until I got to:

The Abs Diet!!

I would link to the abs diet but it is too extreme! It is the kind of diet that uses words and phrases such as "power foods", "ultimate power smoothie", and "almonds are like Jack Nicholson in One Flew over the Cuckoo's Nest: They're the king of the nuts." One of the diet's recipes is called the "Mas Macho Meatballs". Even the lingo in the recipes suggests the testosterone involved in this diet: shredded cheese, oatmeal nuked in water, ice cubes crushed.

The more I read, the more I simultaneously understood that a) this was the silliest diet ever and b) I was absolutely going to do it.

So I went to the grocery store last night and picked up a good amount of "power foods." This required more time in the produce section than I generally like to spend, and finding "low-fat" ingredients was tough. Also I could not track down "ground flaxseed", so I am going to substitute "Ramen Noodel Flavor Packs" for anytime recipes call for...no? Okay, have it your way, hypothetical blog reader. I'll track those down later.

Today is the first day of a diet! I am filled with hope and 100% protein whey! Hopefully intermittently on this blog I will update you on how the man diet is working, and how ripped my abs get. My guess is...pretty ripped!

No time machine

All blogs need names, and the namesake of this blog is a video some friends and I did in high school. If you were in high school and you had a friend or family member with a video camera, you had to make videos. Today people make videos for fun, profit and/or artistic reasons. But back then we made videos because there was absolutely nothing else to do. This was a simpler time, pre-Xbox, and our recreational activities were limited: sports were too grueling, drugs were too expensive and girls wanted nothing to do with us (as should be evident from the following film). So this is what happened, shot in my home in Indiana:



The video's creator Brenan has since done much better stuff, including this awesome thing. (In the latter, look for Will, the ancient French bug hunter, as Fist Murder.) And the desert faun from the future, Geoff, is going to the Peace Corps.

I have since moved to Seattle to have artsy experiences and try to live life on my own. I am without my time machine and warriors from past and future no longer jump out to save me. There is just the present, so, you know, here we go.