Boehmcke's Human Condition

The Crappiest Criminal - Part 2

2012-01-29T18:59:00.000-08:00

A couple of weeks ago, on a particularly frigid night in New York City, I was on my way home to Queens.

I was going to have to change trains at some point in order to get home. I could have done it at 4^th, 34^th, or 42^nd street. However my train philosophy, and really my general travel philosophy is “get as far as you can on the vessel you are on before you change.”

And generally it works out pretty well for me. But for whatever over thought reason, I got off the train at 34^th to change.

At the risk of sounding insensitive I will point out that when it gets really hot outside, or really cold for that matter, you tend to see more homeless people on the climate controlled trains.

But a subway car is a closed space and it is quite frequent that the homeless individuals who have settled in smell less than ideal. Often if I board a car that smells awful or I am aware of somebody who might smell, I’ll move to the next car.

According to the New York City Metropolitan Transit Authority, moving between cars while the train is in motion is illegal. However it is something I have done dozens of times. Many people have. It is something that happens every day in every single car of every train I have ever been on.

Sure it’s illegal, but so is jaywalking, and who gets arrested for jaywalking?

Upon boarding my train, I noticed a pair of homeless individuals, and realizing I had about 30 minutes left before I got home I decided not to risk the smell and moved on to the next car.

As soon as I walked in the next car I saw 7 police officers. My first thought was that I had walked into a murder scene, which made me panic. Then I thought one of the officers was talking to me, which also made me panic.

But he wasn’t talking to me so I just sat down and put my headphones in. Thirty seconds later when we got to the 42^nd street stop and the doors opened, one of the officers signaled to me to get off the train.

Could you come here for a second?

Shit.

The officer was one of a group of three, all who appeared to be fresh out of the academy. He told me that walking between cars is illegal, and asked me if I knew that.

I told him I did.

He asks for my I.D., which I give to him. We are underground one of the three officers has to go upstairs to call it in to make sure the yuppie with the newsboy hat and duffle coat isn’t actually an arms dealer.

I’m standing on the platform, freezing, because I don’t have my gloves on, because they are inside my coat, which I don’t think I’m allowed to open because they don’t know I’m NOT an arms dealer yet. I go to put my hand in my pocket which the officer asks me not to.

Great, first I get pulled off my train, and now I’m going to get chapped hands.

It takes no less than 10 minutes for the officer who took my license to come back. In that time I stare at the floor. I stare off into the distance, at the other people who are now staring at me because I am standing against a wall with two police officers blocking me from moving in any direction.

Some schmuck keeps looking over and smirking. I want to kick him in the junk. I want to push him onto the track. But then I realize he doesn’t know that I got busted for walking between train cars. For all he knows I COULD be an arms dealer… A very preppy arms dealer.

Finally the third officer comes back. And that’s when the officer who asked me to step off the train, the one who looks about 23, reaches into his pocket and pulls out his pad.

I’m going to have to give you a summons.

Which is a lie. You can call it whatever you want, you can call it a Bagel Dog. It’s not a summons. It’s a ticket. A ticket for 75 dollars.

It was at this point that I wanted to yell at him.

Are you kidding me? Look at me? Do I look like a rule breaker? How about you do something about the guy I saw on the train last week who was peeing himself while he was on the train? Or the people who lay across 4 seats to sleep? Or how about the people who panhandle on the train, which is illegal by the way, and then walk between cars, which is also illegal as you know, so they can do more illegal panhandling in the next car they illegally entered. Why can’t you arrest them? Or the people who shout at me to repent for my sins while I ride to work? Or the kids who sell candy for their “basketball team?” How about you give ANY of them a summons?

And this is when I realized, I am not meant to be a risk taker. I can’t even lead an exciting enough life to possibly expose myself to the risk.

I’m the kind of guy who would go to jail for an overdue book, or for putting gum underneath a table. I constantly think about what it would be like to be one of those people who just goes where life takes them, who ignores conventions to just do whatever interests them.

But I can’t even do that because the laws of the universe refuse to even allow me to move away from odiferous transients. How can I break the rules if I can’t even break the smell barrier?

It takes the officer forever to write the ticket because he’s obviously never done it before. So it takes the three of them 15 minutes to read their rulebook, consult each other’s intelligence, and fill out a half a sheet of paper.

I want to argue but everything sounds cliché`. And as a writer, I hate cliché`s.

Give me a break, come on, seriously, and all the rest of that sounds so already used up that I can’t bring myself to say any of it. So I just stand there in silence as he writes my ticket, my ticket for what is officially denoted as “unsafe riding.”

Which if you look at my history of police infractions, pretty much every single one can be classified as “unsafe riding.” Which in and of itself is pretty pathetic sounding. Not even “dangerous riding.” Nope, unsafe. And I guess that’s me.

Rich Boehmcke: Not dangerous just... Unsafe.

The Crappiest Criminal - Part 1

2012-01-22T21:32:00.000-08:00

The first time I really had a run in with the law I was in Arizona. After a slow start to my freshman year at school I was feeling better, healthy, and more like myself again.

After a day doing a service project with my class I realized I needed another pair of flip-flops if I was going to be a full time Arizonian. Having no transportation of my own, my friend was kind enough to let me borrow his badass drop top white jeep.

I had never driven a jeep before and certainly not a convertible. It was quite a thrill especially in the blazing Arizona sun. So feeling good about my life I cranked up the music as I drove around the mall parking lot looking for the store I was headed to.

As I drove the loop of the mall parking lot looking for a parking spot I bobbed my head to the fierce tunes coming out of the stereo. I was completely oblivious to how loud the music was.

At least, until mall security told me to turn it down.

Shot down. Ok whatever no problem. I went into the mall, bought my flip-flops and then hopped in the jeep to head back to campus to get ready for the party that night.

Again the music went up, my foot hit the pedal and as I was again bobbing my head to the beat, feeling good, driving the mall loop towards the exit when I passed a cop headed in the other direction.

It wasn't until that moment that I paid attention to my speed. I quickly covered the break and locked my eyes on the rearview mirror as I watched the cop pass, slow down, make a u-turn and hit the siren.

Shit.

He quickly caught up to me easily since at this point I was driving about 5 miles per hour.

I pulled over into a parking spot and started sweating and shaking uncontrollably.

The officer walked up to the car asked for my license and registration.

The license of course was in my dorm and as for the, registration I had no idea of its location.

When I tried to explain to the officer that I thought you didn’t need to have your license on you (based on some stupid rumor some idiot out of state freshman had told me) the officer disagreed. Him being a police officer and having a gun, he won that debate.

I searched for the registration but couldn't get the glove box open until I realized there was a key on the key chain. I finally got the registration, the officer ran my student I.D. (a ridiculous piece of plastic with a purple sunset on it that proved nothing except the fact that I was a moron from not Arizona).

As the office so kindly explained, there is speeding and there is criminal speeding. Criminal speeding consists of going more than 20 miles over the speed limit.

I was going 22 over.

My charge?

Criminal speeding... In a mall parking lot.

If that doesn't scream I am an insecure teenager I don't know what does. It was simultaneously expensive, frustrating and embarrassing.

My second interaction with the police also happened on a motor vehicle and also happened in Arizona.

I had gotten a job at a bar about 20 minutes away from my apartment. I wasn’t a big fan of the bus so I bought a scooter. It was a little red Vespa lookalike from a brand called TGB, Taiwan Golden Bee. It was a much cheaper competitor to the Vespa, which means “Wasp” in Italian.

It had a small 49 cc engine, which I liked because any engine over 50 CCs meant I needed to get a motorcycle license, which I didn't want to do.

One night I was riding my scooter back from Wendy’s with my helmet on making the turn onto the 2 mile stretch of road back to my apartment when I saw the flashing lights that make your ass clench and heart race all at the same time.

I pulled over and the police officer asked me where my protective eyewear was. This is something that is required by law. I told him it was in the mail, which may or may not have been true.

He told me not having any was illegal and he asked to see me license. So I showed it to him. He looked at it for a second before looking up asking to see my motorcycle license.

I told him I didn't need one because this scooter was only 49 CCs and thereby below the legal limit mandatory for a motorcycle license.

He told me that completely untrue. By law I needed a motorcycle license. Him being a police officer and having a gun, he won that debate.

He told me I wasn’t allowed to drive it home. I could have somebody with a pickup truck come pick me up or I could push it home.

And believe it or not pushing it home seemed to be the less embarrassing of the two options.

So I pushed my scooter home. Two miles. I had been pulled over for not following one rule and was ticketed for completely disregarding another.

One thing had become clear to me at this point; I was done listening to what people told me about the license laws in Arizona.

But it wasn’t until this past weekend that I had the most ridiculous and depressing run ins with the law. This time I would have nobody to blame but myself… and a homeless person.

To be continued…

Everything That's Wrong With Me

2012-01-16T19:31:00.000-08:00

My dermatologist doesn’t want to see me anymore.

I don’t know why. I used to love her. She was great to me. I thought we had a nice rapport. But in October I got a letter from her that said she would be closing her office, moving out of state, and not keeping in touch. She left no forwarding address. Her letter said this would all happen on October 14^th.

I got the letter on October 15^th.

The whole thing was very suspicious. Was she deported to another state? Did she lose her license? Did it turn out she didn’t know what she was doing all along? Was it me? I think it's a bad sign when even your dermatologist doesn't want to see you anymore.

Just, just leave me alone OK? Take your retched skin somewhere else!

Is my naked body really that atrocious? I mean I know it's a bit… reflective, but still.

Luckily I found a new dermatologist. Which is good because I need a dermatologist on call. Especially in the winter when my epidermis pretty much just quits.

If I don't moisturize my hands every 2 hours in the winter they crack and shrivel like a pair of sun-dried tomatoes… except not as delicious

So I find myself applying hand lotion regularly, in the morning, at night, several times throughout the day. However it is almost always right before I need to turn a doorknob or open a jar. So I look like a terribly stupid weakling with no grasp (literally) on modern technology.

Hey can you help me with this door?

Why is it stuck?

Oh… no.

At least I knew what to do about my dry useless hands. But then I noticed I had dry skin under my arms, both of them.

Great.

A new skin disease I had to worry about.

You see the dermatologist who left me kindly informed me last summer that I had psoriasis on my scalp. Silly me, I thought it was just a normal person problem like dandruff. No, it was something way more annoying.

My dermatologist told me I had two options for managing this awesome new addition to my life. My first option was an odorless steroid mousse that I would need to use twice a day for a week. She said that it would probably work.

Oooh steroids, maybe I'd get some muscles. But then I realized I hadn't worked out since ‘09 so that probably wasn't going to happen.

The other option was to put this incredibly stinky… stuff on my scalp every night for a week and sleep with a shower cap on. She said it would definitely work.

Having a medical professional tell me to sleep with a smelly shower cap on would probably be something that would make my wife laugh at me, something that would bind us together in embarrassment, and something that only my wife could love me for.

But I don't have a wife. Which just makes this another embarrassing addition to my private life. This would be really fun to tell to women.

Hey do you want to come back to my place? By the way I sleep in a shower cap that smells like the devil and I have armpit dandruff… More wine?

Sigh.

So aside from my lame scalp, and my deficient hands, I thought the dry armpit skin might be due to my deodorant. So I switched to a "24 Hour Natural Deodorant.” I now realize that is a phrase that should be banned by law.

When I took off the cap it smelled like lemons and maple syrup. Awesome, I support that.

However shortly after applying it I realized the label should have said "2 Hour Natural Odorant; Guaranteed to make you self loathing before lunch."

Which by the way, I looked up the meaning of the word “odorant” and it said:

An odorous substance; especially: one added to a dangerous odorless substance to warn of its presence.

And that sounds about right.

Hey guys do you smell that? Oh my god it’s Rich, RUN!

I caught a whiff of my own scent halfway through the day and almost punched myself in the face for being so stupid. The “deodorant” didn’t just quit, I think it switched sides. As though the task at hand was just too much for it.

I don’t think I can suppress this… but wait… I can make it worse!

Thank god my company supplies spray deodorant, which I then applied liberally while still wearing my shirt because I didn't want to be the guy standing topless at the company bathroom sink.

But applying spray deodorant with your clothes on is challenging. And it’s difficult to aim. So I’m pulling my shirt away from my body with the same arm that I’m trying to elevate so I can point this industrial can of aerosol stink remover at my dilapidated armpit. Naturally people walked in.

Hey Rich what are you doing?

Oh just… fumigating my shirt.

By the time I could finally get to my new dermatologist to tell him about my scalp, and hands and armpits I was exhausted. I fully expected my skin to just fall off one day like a snake’s.

I told my dermatologist about all of my issues, he gave me suggestions and solutions for all of it. Then I told him about my armpits.

He laughed and said

Ahhh, you’re getting old.

That’s not really the answer I was hoping for.

He told me that this happens at my age (28 is not that old people) and it’s due to the winter when it’s very dry and people take very hot showers. So he advised I take showers that were not as hot and moisturize under my arms.

Yea derm, twice last week I forgot to zip up my fly before I left my apartment but I'm definitely going to remember to put some lanolin in my armpit twice a day.

Sigh.

Maybe I should just see if there's some armpit mousse.

The Gift of Sound

2012-01-08T18:57:00.000-08:00

My parents had gotten a new TV before Thanksgiving. Paired with their DIRECTV and Bose sound system this should have been an exciting time in their lives. However at some point the sound quality deteriorated severely. My parents found themselves cranking the volume up all the way just to be able to barely hear it.

Though it was extremely frustrating it was a reality they had come to accept. And that was sad because my parents don’t hear as well as they used to. After working all of their lives they finally retired and have a beautiful huge television with great sound but now… no sound.

However when my sister visited for Thanksgiving we were not satisfied. We saw not only the opportunity to correct the issue, but also an idea for a great holiday gift.

Now I know as much as about electronics as I do about cars. Which is to say I know nothing about electronics. So I went online and started doing research. The research I did pointed to some inexpensive speakers that would work with what my parents had.

Jump to Christmas Eve when my electronically clueless sister and electronically clueless self walked into a big box electronic store to find what we were looking for. After two minutes of talking to the guy there I learned two things.

1. I was an idiot.
2. We needed to by them a stereo tuner and not just speakers.

As these things go the guy said he had ONE stereo tuner in the back that happened to be on sale.

Isn’t that always the case? There’s always just one, and it’s in the back. Like the sales person has to get on a camel and trek 5 miles through the Mohave to get to the back of the store.

It’s never: Yes I have one left and… it’s right here!

But my sister and I are know nothing and it is a really good deal, so we purchased it. The nice guy at the store gives us his card and tells us that when my parents need to come back and purchase the speakers later on, to come back and see him.

We readily comply.

Christmas morning comes and we give the stereo tuner to my parents and they open it up excitedly.

This will make things better!

We say.

You will be able to hear the TV now!

We honestly believe.

Christmas passes, as does the following day. And sure enough it is soon time to install the stereo tuner. So I sit down one morning and begin the process. It starts off easy enough.

I open the box. I take out all of the items. I move the box to the side.

And that’s when things started to go downhill.

The first problem I encountered was the fact that the cords that connect the TV, to the DIRECTV box to the DVD player to the BOSE speakers are all only long enough to just barely make the connections without any slack.

So in order to actually move or unplug anything, I have to get a flashlight and contort my gangly body into the entertainment center. One might think 6 months of yoga would have helped with this, but no, not at all.

Within no time, the normally organized living room looked like this.

Also keep in mind while everything is connected at this point, nothing is actually working. The TV is on but there is no sound, the tuner turns on but it’s not doing anything, and the red light on the Bose speakers just glares at me like the Eye of Sauron.

So that’s when I give up on the instruction booklet, which has a lot of pictures like this:

A picture like that means nothing to me. It could have been the back of a toaster over and I wouldn’t have known the difference.

And I want to be clear I tried to follow the instructions, I really did. But after I followed the instructions and didn’t get it to work the first time, I knew I was screwed. So I just started plugging every cord into every hole in every machine in the living room. If you had told me to run the microwave while putting my tongue in the DVD player I would have tried it.

Nothing worked.

So I took to the Internet.

Bad idea.

I don’t know how to fix what isn’t working because I don’t even know what’s wrong. So I’m googling things like…

How come this isn’t working when I plug the red thing into the red hole?

Or I’ll just write the name of every product I am trying to connect and put a question mark at the end. And believe it or not that’s when I started to find answers.

Meanwhile, at this point it has now been two days since I took apart the living room. The discussions between my parents and I have elevated in intensity as none of us knows what’s wrong.

My dad wants it to work. My mom wants us to just return the thing. And I can't bare to face the guy at the store business card I got, too embarrassed to admit that I’m a technical moron and maybe I should have just bought my dad a book.

After reading multiple sites and comment boards I finally come across a picture of the Bose system my parents have with a remote control. I ask my parents if they have a remote control.

No.

I don’t think so.

Let me check.

At this point I’m spiraling down a hole of self-doubt and regret as I anticipate the conversations I will have with my friends after I return home.

Hey rich what did you get your parents for Christmas?

Oh three small fights, an old remote control scavenger hunt and hypertension.

Twenty minutes later we have found a lost remote control with dead batteries. After we change the batteries I press the power button the little red light suddenly turns green. Their original speakers work! The sound is perfect!

They didn’t need a stereo tuner, or new speakers, or a trip to best buy… all they needed was to turn their speakers on.

It wasn't their fault, heck, none of us knew what was going on. But maybe buying them new things isn't the way to go. Maybe next year I will just find something around that house that doesn’t work and fix it.

Or at least... turn it on.

The Year of Incredible Focus

2012-01-01T20:33:00.000-08:00

There is a box of mismatched Legos sitting on the second shelf of the entertainment center in my apartment, they are the ashes of my childhood, pieces of my life leftover, significant but otherwise unused.

When I first moved into my apartment, while I waited for my furniture to be delivered I came across them. As I wiled away the hours and hours waiting for the furniture delivery guy to never show up I played with those Legos, making vehicles and forts, building the same way I did when I was a child.

When it came time to put them somewhere I couldn't bring myself to throw them out so I just put them in a sealed box on my shelf. Once in a while I peek in there to take a look at them, check up on them I guess. But otherwise there they sit, undisturbed.

One of the first blogs I wrote, the fourth one to be exact, was about how I had inherited all of my parents dishes, bowls, cutlery and glassware. As a single man living by myself it was far too much for one person. Nearly 4 years later it is still too much for one person. I have more glasses than I have friends. That might concern me if I didn't have enough glasses to break one every single day for the next 2 months and still have enough for a house party.

When I first moved in to my apartment the goal was stuff. Get stuff. Acquire stuff. Display stuff. And that I succeeded at. My apartment quickly went from barren to overstuffed. It's embarrassing to note that it was two months after my apartment was robbed before I realized my sunglasses had been one of the things stolen.

And speaking of, it is just over a year since my apartment was robbed. Looking back now it is very easy for me to say how lucky I was. I was not home, I was not harmed, I lost many material possessions but nothing that I couldn't ultimately get over. Between the insurance payments and an incredibly superfluous outpouring of generosity from my coworkers, I was able to continue leading my life, continue with my trip to Fiji and move on.

The toll the robbery took on my psyche was much greater. I bought a security gate for my window. I used to laugh when somebody would come into my apartment and immediately lock the door behind them. Now I do that every time. The unique creaks and noises of my apartment that used to endear the building to me now reminded me of the robbery. Every time the trees outside brushed against the fire escape, or the people in the apartments next to mine made the floor creak, my heart momentarily stops. I realize I will never feel as safe as I did before my apartment was robbed.

After the robbery I felt angry at myself for being so connected to my material possessions. Did I really need so many watches? Did I really just say I "loved" that watch? How did I let myself get so... materialistic?

I know it wasn't intentional. When I left college with no real idea of what I wanted to do or who I wanted to be, I concentrated on the only truly tangible goal I had, having my own apartment.

So the two years I spent working two jobs to get my place were spent daydreaming of the kinds of things I would fill it with; the art, the books, the dishes. The sheer amount of time I spent thinking about dishware at 23 should have let me know it was time to find some new goals... or at least a hobby.

It was an easy, specific, tangible goal. Get enough stuff to fill my apartment and then I would feel whole.

Having had a year to think about the events of that night, the things I lost, and how it all affected me I realize that the sheer idea of having my personal space violated by a stranger has done far worse things to me than losing any of that stuff. And while I'm sure the robbery's effects on me will never entirely go away (though I can hope) I do have control over something else: my attachment to my stuff.

I am not about to make a claim that I am going to give up all of my stuff and live a monastic life. I love having nice things. But I can limit their importance in my life.

On the verge of a brand new year, and a year in which I will be closer to 30 than ever before, and following a year that rocked me in so many ways I could never have expected, I am suddenly aware of how scattered my lifestyle has been.

I have spent my days chasing new projects, new distractions, new experiences, things that are better, more unique or exciting, all without any real thought with how they were contributing to my overall story. As a writer I am also aware of how exhausting it can be trying to tell 9 different stories at the same time. And I have been focused too heavily on cramming my life full of stories, events, and experiences, that I have paid little attention to the story I was actually trying to tell.

I do know that I don't want my story to be the one of the guy who acquired too many things and had a bunch of experiences but never really ended up where he wanted to be. Now I know it's impossible to know exactly where you will end up when you begin, writing has taught me that too. And I'm not trying to do that either.

I simply seek to reduce my life down to more elemental things. Fewer, quality pieces. More significant relevant interactions with friends. And more focus when it comes to the things I want to do. While it was fun to write a huge play that I never produced, then write 6 episodes of a web series that got put on hold, and then write and shoot a short film that ended up in limbo, and then write and direct a play which actually went up, I always felt like I was at the whim of my life experiences and my own boredom. And the combination of the two was exhausting.

So in the next year I seek to do the following:

To clean out my apartment of those things that are not extremely necessary to who I am and the life I want to lead.
To limit the amount of things I do merely to distract myself, even if that means subjecting myself to sitting still and thinking about my life... my least favorite thing.
To focus my attention on the projects that I am in love with. To stop trying to do everything, all the time, in the fear that not doing means I am wasting away.

And those Legos on my shelf? Well, I will package them up nicely and donate them. Maybe the ashes of my childhood will become the seeds of somebody else's.

Death in the Woods

2011-12-27T12:18:00.000-08:00

As we plowed down the unpaved road in a pickup truck that we would soon found out did not have 4 wheel drive I had an interesting thought:

This might not be a good idea.

Shortly thereafter my phone rang. It was my buddy in the Hyundai ahead of us.

Turn back. Don't come any further we are stuck in the mud.

Naturally by the time he had finished his sentence we were directly behind his Hyundai and stuck in snow mixed with mud which had made a wonderful slush that trapped us too.

My then girlfriend gunned the engine of her parents Toyota pickup truck we were driving, trying to get us into reverse and out of the woods. I turned to her and said:

I thought you said this was four wheel drive?

She turned to me and shrugged.

I thought it was.

Ohhhh. Suddenly it became clear.

We were going to die in the woods.

I had thought of the many ways I might die in my life. But stranded in a snow covered wood from starvation really had never entered my mind. I'm not one for camping, or hiking, or just hanging out in the woods. So not only was I surprised that I was going to die in the woods, but that we had ended up in the woods in the first place.

That wasn't the plan. The plan was to go skiing. And in 2005 when you needed to get someplace you had never been before, you went on MapQuest. And whatever MapQuest said to do... we did. It had never gotten me lost before. I had always arrived safely at my destination.

Then again MapQuest had never invented an imaginary road that cut across a mountain to a ski resort.

So there we are, 4 of us, 2 couples with a Hyundai and a Toyota stuck in the slush trying to get a pick up truck out of the slush with a board and our wits.

Needless to say this didn't work.

So instead we started debating what to do. Who should we call? The police? What would we even say?

Hi 911? Yes we are lost in the woods. No I don't know where, we are lost. Actually if you try and get directions to go skiing via MapQuest that should get you to where we are right now.

We didn't have any friends in the area, and the only friends we did have were 3 hours away back in Phoenix. We were lost deep in thought when we saw a Honda barreling down the dirt road towards us. Immediately we start screaming.

TURN BACK! STOP! DON'T COME ANY FURTHER!

Before it makes it all the way to us the Honda stops and two girls wearing flip flops step out of the car. Part of me wonders if we should have let them keep going at this point. Immediately it is obvious that these two girls are also going skiing via MapQuest directions. We explain the situation to them and right away the driver gets all pissy with us... like we're trying to prevent them from going skiing.

Yea that's it, we know the skiing is really good so we basically parked our cars in the snow on a dirt road in the middle of the woods MILES AWAY FROM THE SKI SLOPES so nobody could get to the good snow which we are hoarding.

A-holes.

The a-holes get back in their Honda (which is smaller than both of our cars) and manage to back out of the woods to safety and civilization and all that crap, whereas the four of us are left with a greater issue. It is cold. We have no plan to get out. And some of us have to go to the bathroom.

As we are all aware, there are two kinds of having to go to the bathroom. The kind you wouldn't mind doing in the woods, and the kind you never want to have to do in the woods.

Naturally you can probably imagine the situation we were faced with here.

Even though you are in the middle of the woods, miles from people, part of you still thinks...

I wish I had a door right now.

But enough about that. After walking in circles we eventually decided we had to walk back the way we came. So we locked our cars (who knows) and started trekking out of the woods. We had been walking for about 15 minutes when I saw a giant black bear running towards us.

As it turns out it was just a large dog. But when you think you're going to die in the woods your mind is ready to accept crazy things.

But now I was worried I was going to eaten by a rabid woods dog. Until I saw a man following it. At which point I was ready to be confronted by an axe. I really didn't know what to expect.

As it turns out the man was the nicest man I'd ever met in the woods (read: only). We told him our story and he said just the weekend before he had met more people in the woods who had been kindly guided there by MapQuest and it's "invent a road" software. He volunteered to drive to Wal-Mart, buy a tow strap, and then come back into the woods and tow us out!

We were all in disbelief. How could a person be so nice? That's amazing! Please do!

As he drove us one of my friends turned to the rest of us and said "Is this a good idea?"

We suddenly realized that this guy knew we were stranded in the woods and maybe he was going back to get his weapons or people chopper or axe wielding friends. But we realized we didn't really have a choice.

And believe it or not he came back, axe-less and with a tow strap, and pulled us out of the woods.

I don't remember his name, and we never heard from him again but I never used MapQuest again.

Sliding Slowly Down the Mountain

2011-12-18T20:43:00.000-08:00

How do you feel?

This is the question everybody keeps asking me.

After nearly 6 months of working to bring a play from idea to implementation, after beating a script into submission, hunting for theaters, soliciting actors, rehearsing to ungodly hours, doubting every facet of my life, and more restless sleep than I care to remember… I’m not sure how I feel.

I know I am incredibly proud of the show, I felt warmed, and purged, and impressed, and wowed and fulfilled, but this past week has almost felt like a hangover.

I know I don't feel numb, it's actually quite the opposite, I think I feel everything. Kind of like being underwater, where every sense on your body feels something, like you’re enveloped.

I do know I feel tired. I haven't felt this tired in years, since I was 21 and running homecoming for my school. A week of events had left me so drained that I fell asleep sitting up at the lunch table on the last day. The mayor was sitting across from me, kicked me under the table and said

Hey, go home and go to bed.

This feels kind of like that.

How does one even begin to contextualize something like this? How can I make others understand when I myself have barely managed to wrap my brain around it. I think about every moment of the process every hour of every day. I quote the play in my head. I replay conversations I had with my actors. I relive the feedback I heard from the attendees. It is like the entire experience is on loop in my head and I kind of can’t stop it long enough to realize:

A: It’s over.

B: What that means?

People also keep asking me what’s next. And while I know, I’ve known for months what my next project would be… I’m not ready to look at it yet.

It’s kind of like finishing a really amazing dinner. A meal that was slow cooked that you took your time to savor than lives on your tongue long after your plate is cleared. And the natural instinct is to start the next course, or dessert, but I’m not ready for the sensation on my tongue to dissipate yet.

This project took so much out of me in the best way possible. I honestly believe by the time Saturday night came, and my actors took their last bow… I had nearly nothing left to give.

Every night of the show I watched from the back of the theater, trying to gage the audiences reactions by their faces, trying to anticipate how it was making them feel. My head swiveled back and forth from my incredible actors to the audience. Back and forth, back and forth.

But on the last night I had a hard time watching the show. It had nothing to do with the fact that I knew exactly how it would go, or that I had seen it dozens and dozens of times. Something about the fact that this was the last time it was going to happen made it almost unbearable to watch.

Logic says to me that it should have been the opposite, that I should have been glued to their performance, but for some reason, not knowing if I would ever see it staged again almost… hurt.

And so these last 7 days I too have almost hurt. I feel slow, purged but at the same time sluggish, laden with all of the emotions I struggled with over the last 6 months… over the last year.

I have had crazy dreams every single night. Wild dreams with diverse casts of characters in far off places, a result no doubt of having repressed my creativity for anything except this very project.

My emotions have been so close to the surface. The first two shows I did I felt this overwhelming storm of tears brewing within me, and sure enough sometime after the show ended, those tears came in force, no doubt aided by alcohol.

This time was different. Seemingly little things bring tears. A story from my actor telling me what she appreciated about the show. Questions from friends about how this affected me. And as always, self realizations about who I am or am not.

All of this has made it feel like I am walking through sand the last week. Not getting anywhere quickly, incredibly aware of how much energy it takes.

And this might not make sense, but the way I feel, the way I have been this past week has almost felt… earned. Like I deserved it. In some sick way, this exhaustion is almost exactly what I didn’t even know I wanted to feel.

One of my good friends who came to the show and I were talking last week about the important attributes artists need to have to be successful. I mentioned vision. We went back and forth a little bit about it but as I sit here now and write this, I realize how important it has been for me.

The ability to see where I want to go, to trust that I have the ability to take myself there, that I can will myself into something more than I was when I woke up this morning, that such a thing or place exists, to me that has become more important than ever before.

So I turn my eyes to the future, to unknown lands, and to the next mountain I look forward to sliding slowly down.

Phantom Vibrations

2011-11-29T06:01:00.001-08:00

I noticed it for the first time when I went to South America a couple of years ago. After 3 flights and nearly 24 hours of travel I had arrived in Santiago, Chile without my luggage. To kill time I took a walk around the city to start my day.

I was soaking up the sights and sounds when I felt my phone vibrate. I reached my hand into my pocket and… nothing. My phone hadn't vibrated because there was no phone. My phone didn't work internationally and there was no reason to have it with me so it was turned off and buried in the bottom of my backpack where it would remain until I returned to the states.

So if my phone wasn't in my pocket why did I feel this phantom ring?

It happened to me several more times that trip and it was weird, kind of spooky. Like I had a haunted thigh.

I was in South America for over two weeks and by the time I left the phantom vibrations had tapered off. I had very much realized that there was no phone in my pocket and the only vibrations were in my brain. But since that trip phantom vibrations happen to me regularly.

Part of it makes sense because I rarely have my phone on anything but vibrate. I used to have specialized ringtones for all of my friends but stopped doing that when I realized how much effort it was.

It's not saying that I don't love my friends and think they are all deserving of individual recognition... it's just that they are all equal in my eyes.

Ahem, moving on.

But what started as a coincidental observation in South America has turned into something more. I check my phone way too often. Sometimes it does vibrate but I don't feel it. I use this as a reason to justifying checking my phone every other minute. Perhaps it is not hyperbole to call it an addiction. What else do I do 20 or 30 or… 50 times a day?

It's the only activity that's normal to do that frequently. If I wanted to know if it was raining, I might check online, or look out the window. But if walked over to the window 30 times a day to see if it was raining, people would think I was a mental patient.

If my phone were a person, our conversations would go like this.

Hey do I have an email?

No.

Hey do I have a text?

No.

Hey did somebody tweet at me?

No.

What about an email?

No.

Are you sure?

Yes.

And still no texts?

No.

Do you want to check if I have any emails?

::punch::

Yes from time to time I do get some important emails. Perhaps my bank balance is low, or somebody needs a last minute favor, or a friend is unexpectedly in town, but on the whole as embarrassing as it is to say… my life isn't that important.

There aren't teams of people running around asking each other

What would Rich Boehmcke do? What does he think? We should email him immediately and find out.

And now that I think about it, I'm pretty sure I don't want teams of people wondering that.

Sometimes I will pull my phone out of my pocket and if the little green light in the upper right hand corner isn't blinking I will just put it back in my pocket. And in my head I will congratulate myself for resting the temptation to turn on the screen just to make sure.

Like this is some kind of great life accomplishment.

I pretty much did the same thing when I was down at my parents house this weekend. They live in a quiet part of South Carolina and going down there is absolutely relaxing. Their development is super quiet, nobody has anything to do, I just sit on the porch and chill.

I take this as an opportunity to not carry my phone around all the time. An added bonus of this is I no longer have a super hot nuclear generator toxic electro wave distribution power plant pressed up against my leg for much of the day. I am absolutely terrified of the as yet unknown effects of carrying a cell phone around all day so the chance to have it not pressed up against my flesh 2/3 of the day is a welcome relief.

But even when I take my phone out of my pocket and leave it in my room, throughout the day I will still walk past my phone and glance at it.

WHAT AM I EXPECTING TO SEE?

Even when I do have an email, 999 out of 1,000 times it is some unenlightening mailing list I subscribe to, or a bank update, or something else I don't even care about. But somehow that little frigging green light makes me feel validated. Like every time it blinks it says:

Richyouarespecial Richyouarespecial Richyouareloved

When I was in South America, or any of the other times I've left the country, I have had no problem leaving my phone in my luggage until I get back home. Because I WANT to unplug. I like stepping away from technology and connection. I like being off the grid for a while. I like taking the time to soak up things like conversations and scenery and ya know… life.

And when there is no chance of being contacted, I don't worry about what might being going on elsewhere. I went to Fiji earlier this year and not only did I not care about email or Facebook or texts, but I also couldn't stay awake for the entire day and I fell asleep every night by 10.

But for some reason, if there is even a remote possibility that somebody might potentially have a fraction of a reason to get in touch with me… man it is all I can do to avoid checking my phone every 90 seconds like I am about to get a text from Jesus.

What I really need to do is realize that if there IS actually something important about to happen, I can always just take out my phone and hold it in my hand, crank up the volume and wait for said event to occur.

But again, the chance of that happening is pretty slim. Considering there are no Victoria's Secret Models, Hollywood Producers, or Renaissance patrons of the arts who have my phone number.

So if there is a chance, a slim, fractional, remote chance that somebody… anybody, wonders what would Rich Boehmcke do?

Well, I'll answer them now. He'd probably just check his email.

Reason # 1 Why I'll Never Be Cooler Than You

2011-11-20T20:22:00.001-08:00

My feet are slanty.

I didn’t know this until the 4th grade. I always just assumed I had normal feet. In fact that’s pretty much how it goes for most of us isn’t it? We think everything fine until somebody else tells us it isn’t.

I had never really had any significant pains in my body before. Up until that point the worst thing to happen to me had been a fractured finger in the summer before the third grade.

Technically it was my sister’s fault. You see we were in the Poconos sitting upstairs on the fold out futons and watching Police Academy (it’s amazing what you remember) and she said something to anger little Richard.

So instead of hashing it out with words I ran at her with my arms extended like I was an athletic Frankenstein. All she had to do was put her foot out and then my perfectly straight ring finger turned into a janky swollen mess.

My mother splinted it up with the top of a band aid box. She was less than thrilled with my conflict resolution abilities.

It wasn’t too difficult to live with and it didn’t really affect my life much except it did delay the development of my cursive handwriting.

In fact I’ll just go ahead and blame my poor handwriting today on that.

But aside from that I had never had any major pain in my body. But then I started playing CYO basketball. And it wasn’t long after I started that I would feel this excruciating pain up and down my legs hours after I got home from practice.

My parents were baffled they didn’t know what to do. They would give me Tylenol and tell me to lay down on my bed. There I would lay while the numbing pain in my legs would just continue to throb.

This happened a few times before my mom finally took me to the foot doctor. I didn’t even know there was a foot specific doctor. Imagine my surprise when my mother brought me to a house in the neighborhood next to ours.

Wait, so this “foot doctor” can just work out of his house? We’re sure he’s legit?

We didn’t go in his front door but a door next to the garage that led into his office. Immediately I was confronted with a smell of must and stagnation. It smelled liked what I might have imagined the 70s smelled like.
 The décor was that of a turn of the century explorer. Animal heads and African art displayed amongst the 24 different kinds of brown that adorned the office.

The doctor himself was a nice man, nearly a relic himself with big soft hands that he used to gingerly touch my extremely ticklish feet.

The examination room was unlike any doctor’s office I had ever been. I distinctly remembering thinking there were many tools I had never seen and certainly did not understand.

But luckily I didn’t need to. The good doctor said my feet slanted in and I would need orthotics. He took molds of my feet and a couple weeks later I had new blue plastic inserts red padding and a blue leather cover that was glued to the top.

My instructions were to wear them in every pair of shoes I wore.
 Forever.

That was one of my first inclinings that I was never going to be cool. I had never heard any of my cool friends talk about having orthotics. I had never heard ANYbody talk about orthotics.  As far as I knew I was the only person on the planet who had to wear orthotics.

I sought to alleviate my insecurities by sharing this latest development with some of my elementary school “friends.”
 I explained in earnest that I now had these plastic inserts I had to wear in my shoes all the time because I was getting really bad leg pains due to the slanted in nature of my feet.

And do you know what my “friends” said in response?

RICH HAS RETARDED FEET!

Damn it.

I even remember the part of the hallway on the second floor just before the staircase we were walking past the first and last time I told anybody I wear orthotics.

I eventually grew used to them and became comfortable putting them in all of my shoes. They became second nature; I just switched them from shoe to shoe whenever I change shoes. I realize right away if I’ve accidentally put on shoes that don’t have them.

It also makes trying on shoes considerably more embarrassing. Like when the shoe clerk brings out a pair and instead of just putting them on, I pull out my orthotics and slide them into the shoes as the clerk looks on with complete bafflement.

It’s like I pulled my own salad dressing out of my pocket at a restaurant.

Trust me shoe clerk, this has nothing to do with you or your shoes. It’s my feet.

Most shoes don’t account for custom plastic inserts to be added later. So a lot of shoes I really like end up being way too uncomfortable to purchase.

And I suppose it’s for the best. Maybe it’s god’s way of telling me (Through my slanty feet) that I should focus on being comfortable instead of cool.

I’m 28 years old now and have been wearing my orthotics for 18 years without interruption. However my mother will still ask me from time to time:

Are you wearing your orthotics?

Trust me mom. Between the excruciating leg pain or the inability to purchase cool shoes, I’ll stick with my uncool shoes.

Chasing the Familiar

2011-11-13T19:10:00.001-08:00

I’ve been there 100 times in dozens of different locations. I’ve spent money, I’ve used gift cards, and I’ve ordered things I never quite understood. And while I might have had the sensation many times before… I don’t think I actually realized it until just recently: I find a kind strange familial comfort in Starbucks.

A couple of weeks ago when we were first starting rehearsals for my upcoming play, I had met my actors at a Starbucks to read through some lines for a couple of hours. It was early Sunday morning when I emerged from the subway in midtown east.

It was one of those delicious fall mornings in Manhattan when you want to walk for blocks and never stop. I was chewing on my love of the weather when I walked into the Starbucks and immediately I was transported back to college.

Even though Starbucks had become ubiquitous long before I left for college. During high school I had spent plenty of time shooting the shit with friends over hot chocolate when we just needed to get out of house.

I would grab my coat and keys to leave the house when my mom would say:

Where are you going?
Mike and I are going to grab some coffee at Starbucks
But you don’t drink coffee...
I know, it’s a saying. I'll have a hot chocolate.
Then why do you say…
Bye Mom!

We had the exact same conversation almost every time.

Sometimes we’d drive to a different Starbucks just because we could. It seems we spend the first half of our lives looking for something different, and the latter half looking for more of the same.

But for as much time as I spent in Starbucks in high school, the first inhalation I take when I walk through the door always puts me on the campus of Arizona State University.

When I got to college I got a meal plan. There were points you could use for dining in the cafeteria or flex dollars you could use pretty much anywhere on campus. Those flex dollars made you feel like a member at any of the places you used them. Like you were above cash or credit. One of the places I went regularly was Starbucks.

Starbucks was where I discovered you could get a peppermint shot to kick up your cocoa. It’s where I discovered chai. And it’s also where I discovered too much chai could make my eye twitch for a week.

It was this easy breezy beverage dispensary that was almost always completely different inside the doors than outside of them.

Outside the familiar green lady looked at you with seemingly open arms. Inside it was almost always a little warmer, (or in the blistering Arizona summers, a lot cooler) it smelled wonderful and the music was mellow with just enough pep to make your foot tap if you were prone to such inclinations.

I think about the college friends I chatted with while at Starbucks. I think about the girls I dated and sat for hours with. I think about killing time before and after class.

But when the weather turns cold Sarbucks almost always makes me think of the holidays.

Just as Macy’s puts up its Christmas trees in early October, and Rockefeller center has their ice skating rink up by Halloween, Starbucks cues up the season with decorated windows, holiday cups and limited time seasonal flavors just as the leaves start to hit the ground.

Pumpkin spice, gingerbread, hazelnut and peppermint are the four horsemen of the holiday season.

Maybe it is the fact that in the winter time I almost always end up there with a loved one, huddled together while swathed in multiple woolen layers clutching those paper cups trying desperately to get warm.

And I am pretty positive my hot chocolate intake would be a fraction of what it is today without Starbucks.

Starbucks is where I discovered new Christmas music by old artists, or old music covered by new artists. It is where I discovered my affinity for their exotic smells and renewed my affinity for whipped cream.

It’s the familiar dark wood and faux iron furniture. The occasional couch when you find one and it happens to be empty. The green straws. The recycled napkins. The sounds of steaming, spitting, machines doing god knows what.

I make fun of my parents for being in love with The Panera Bread Company, a cozy chain restaurant known for its soups and sandwiches. When they moved to South Carolina they bemoaned the loss of Panera bread the way most people remember a long lost friend.

And when a Panera finally opened down the road from them, they told me often how when I came down to visit we could go there. Strange thing, going down to South Carolina to go to a restaurant I had been to dozens of time in NY.

But upon closer inspection my affinity for Starbucks was really no different. The familiar layout, regular menu items, sounds, and smells were the same hooks that tied my parents to Panera.

I was traveling in Paris one summer while backpacking in college. I was walking with a friend who mentioned having to stop off at the "American Embassy."

Imagine my surprise when she ran into a McDonalds to use the bathroom. I suddenly understood the reference.

If McDonalds was her American embassy then perhaps Starbucks is my college embassy. It is a place that I will always enjoy going if only for the fact that it reminds me of a time when my psyche was clay, my eyes were wide and my story was very much unwritten.

And also for their whipped cream. That helps too.

Content is King

2011-11-06T21:13:00.000-08:00

When I applied to speak at the 20 Something Blogger Summit in Chicago this summer I basically gave them a list of 239 things I could speak about in the hopes that they would select me. They ended up choosing me to speak about “The Future Will Be Vlogged.”

Seemed like a fancy title, but it wasn’t until I started thinking about it that I realized I had a lot to say about that. It wasn’t just because I had created content in the past, and made videos, and posted things on the Internet. No, it was because I was getting frustrated.

Everything I saw on the Internet was so negative and snarky. Or if wasn’t directly making fun of something it was parodying it. Now I definitely believe parody can be awesomely relevant, but it just seemed liked anything that was made was parodying something else and it seemed so derivative.

And video blogging? Forget it. It seemed like every video blog I had ever came across was some pimply tween whining about how they found a hole in their sock during math.

Who cares?

So how the hell was I going to lead a session in Video blogging when I hadn’t really found anything I wanted to watch?

Well lucky I didn’t have to talk about what I liked, only what the future would hold. And luckily people tweeted live as I moderated this panel so what follows is what I actually said, and what I meant.

There is a tremendous demand for content. The rate we share content outpaces the rate we create.

In the beginning there were very few platforms whereby you could create content and share it with your friends. But then the ability to share became second nature. And amongst the major social platforms we now get bombarded with the same videos from different people on a regular basis.

That becomes an issue when every channel is airing the same shows and movies. When every website has the same videos. When you can see a piano playing cat on YouTube, Facebook, twitter, and dozens of other places.

For a while the pendulum was swinging in the direction of sharing. And while the rate at which we share will never slow down, the demand for content is now just as important. That is why you have brands like Hulu, Yahoo, YouTube, Netflix and more doing their own original content.

For a while people wanted to ingest content as fast as they could, but with that means content gets old quickly. Those who create content in the future will control it.

Content isn't a well that runs dry. It's endlessly refreshed

So many people have had great ideas for scripts, a series, or some other type of broadcasted content that they haven’t implemented because they worried about using up their good ideas.

The thing about creating though is that it’s not a one-time thing. Sure you have one hit wonders and people who do one big thing and never work again. But for the large majority of people, if you have enough in you to make one thing, chances are you have enough in you to make another. Making begets making. Start making something and see where it takes you.

It's not a challenge to find out how to be different. It's a challenge to be MORE of yourself.

And now with the hierarchy of content creators flattened and everybody having the ability to create whatever they want whenever they want, people worry, oh how will I stand out.

And so that is why you have people being audacious and ridiculous online. Doing incredibly stupid things to get attention. And sure it might work for a time. But since now everybody can make stuff, the possibility that someone out there is making something for YOU is greater than ever.

My prediction for the future is that there will be fewer major celebrities and what you will see is the rise of middle class celebrities. Not to say that minivans will become extremely popular. Rather I mean that there will be new niches and audiences that will spring up as more people connect with those with the same interests. And the best way to do that is by talking about or just doing the things you truly love.

The transition from content creator to curator happens fast. They like you; they want to know what you like.

And this is how those middle class celebs will come to be. Since we now all have an online presence, the people who like what we make will be curious to see what we like. This is how community is built, people liking things together.

So the people that never thought they could make anything will make stuff and people will see it and follow the stuff that those people making stuff never thought anybody would care to see.

Make sense? It probably shouldn’t.

Things that people have said will never work, work all the fucking time.

OK granted this is pretty vulgar but it’s true. I swear when I’m emphatic. And I am emphatic about this. The success of our culture is based on the principle that people who say stuff won’t work HAVE to be wrong.

Nobody knows for sure anymore. I have no idea what will work or what won’t. But I know what I love, and I know what I love to do. And I know how I feel when I do those things. So if I can pursue those things without harming anybody and while making myself happy… why the hell not?

So if somebody tells you no, well, just remember what Brian Grazer says:

No is just a moment in time.

I left that conference extremely enthusiastic about what I had to say and what people were eager to know. And thusly, after mocking, making fun of, and privately judging video bloggers… I became one. (anything I made fun of I eventually became.)

It supports the things I stated here. I talk about what I love. I keep it relevant. It is positive. And most importantly, I make it happen fast.

Ladies and gentlemen, I give you…

90 Second Love.

Play Time

2011-10-30T20:27:00.000-07:00

I was 25. I had been living on my own for about a year. And my social life was anything but bustling. “Going out” typically meant drinking beers and eating fancy pizza with my friend Andrea whom I had done theater with in high school.

Andrea mentioned to me that our high school theater teacher who was a huge mentor for me, was putting on a play in Manhattan and she was going to get tickets. She asked if I wanted to go. I readily agreed.

As we took the elevator the 4th floor of a sliver of a building just off Broadway, and walked down a narrow hallway past a meeting of some very large, bearded, individuals meeting for a support group, I wondered if this was indeed the best use of our time.

The play went well and afterwards my mentor told me had a small part in a play for me.

Seeing as I was not an actor and hadn’t been in a play since I was 17 and was now an “adult” with a full time job and my own apartment, I was a bit surprised and not really sure I should be in a play. But on second thought I really had nothing else going on in my life, so why the hell not?

As it turns out there was a part for Andrea as well

It wasn’t really difficult acting that I was required to do. I had a handful of lines and basically my role was to run around the stage and portray the life of an 8 year old who was up to mischief in the woods.

A tony deserving performance it was not.

The show only went up for two nights and it was sparsely attended. And it made me realize a couple of things.

The first was that I find acting to be extremely boring! The performing part of it is fun and something I enjoy, but the sitting still in rehearsals, not talking, having to stay in one place while things get set up around you, oh man was that boring. It was about the worst thing in the world for my ADD.

But after the show was over I realized something else. I too could write a short play that not many people come to see!

So that’s what I did. While waiting for my turn to speak at a job function I was attending, I wrote 3 pages of dialogue in red pen on the back of my notes. Those pages became the foundation of dialogue of my first play; Disengaged.

I convinced Andrea this was something we should do and she agreed, or maybe I just hung up on her before she could disagree.

Either way she was in.

I wrote a companion piece, we booked a theater, and put on our first show. It was one of the most incredible experiences watching the words I wrote come out of other people’s mouths and see an audience react to them.

I was immediately hooked.

I took a couple of weeks off after the show but I started writing again, and nine months later we mounted our second show Safety and Desire.

It was different than anything I had ever done before in that it was more grounded in real life conversations and there was poetry in it, my own.

We actually oversold the show and by all accounts it was a great success. But afterwards I felt like something was missing.

And the more I thought about it, I realized it was because it went so quickly. I had spent months working on the script. And then more months planning, looking for theaters, casting, marketing and countless hours with Andrea discussing every minute aspect of the show.

And then for six weeks we rehearsed. Nearly every single day we spent several hours with the actors running lines, blocking scenes, and getting ready to put this thing on. I was still bartending at the time too.

So I would work from 9 to 5, then go to rehearsal from 6 to 10, and then rehearse all weekend and then bartend on Sundays from 4 to 10.

And for as crazy bone tired as that made me, I never didn’t want to do it. I was in love with it the whole time. Sure I had no time to do anything else and kept running out of clean underwear and cutlery, but it was worth it.

So when both performances of the show were over it felt kind of like… that’s it? I wanted more. I didn’t feel purged of the show. I felt like I wanted it to go on longer, to share it with more people, and prolong its life.

And I think a part of me was also hoping for the show to save me. I don’t know how that would have happened or what it would have meant. But I think I just was expecting some kind of reaction or response or something more significant.

So I made a promise to myself, the next time I did a show it would be for longer.

Well guess what… that time is here!

My next play is coming December 7th – 10th in Manhattan! So if you are going to be even close to the area I’d love to see you there. It’s called Ripped at the Seems and you can buy tickets at www.ripped.eventbrite.com.

It’s a show about a lot of things, but more than anything it’s about the things we think but never say. It’s about the conversations that Andrea and I have after rehearsals or when we’ve had too much wine (which isn’t an infrequent occurrence).

I am so excited to put this show on for twice as many nights as any show I’ve done but I’m also excited because I’ve made another promise to myself.

And that promise is that this show won’t save me. Whatever hopes and dreams I have for after the show, I’ve let go of.

Well, almost let go of. I’m close. Really close.

But the goal is just to enjoy the process, because it’s all process. We all spend too much time on this for it to be just about what happens during 4 days in December. I have made a commitment to just love every minute of this.

And hopefully it shows.

Until then, enjoy the trailer!

Sounds Like Home

2011-10-23T19:19:00.000-07:00

The house I grew up in made a variety of sounds. They were the natural creaks, and groans, expansions and contractions, flexes and bends that a house makes. I got pretty good at knowing which step would make a squeak, or how far I could open a door before it would make a noise.

Living in a house with three other people you also get used to the noises they make. Which sneeze belongs to whom, who lumbers up the stairs versus who runs, and tons of other inconsequential other sounds that you never really pay attention to.

All of that stuff pretty much left the forefront of my mind as soon as I moved into my own place. My new apartment was a host of new sounds. I had a really squeaky floor before I got any furniture. My heating hissed at me like a disapproving audience. And every door had its own signature alert when opened or closed.

But shortly after moving in I was lying in bed not yet asleep when somebody in the apartment next to me or below me coughed loud enough that I could hear it.

My first thought was:

Oh Dad must still be awake.

But then I realized that wasn’t my dad coughing, it was just… a stranger. It threw me for a second. It was a surreal moment. I didn't know any of the people who would be making sounds around me.

I quickly learned the people to the right of me really like explosiony action movies. The woman to the left of me really liked vacuuming… a lot. She also liked Barry White. And sometimes she liked vacuuming TO Barry White.

Not too long ago I came home and noticed my neighbor had the “Ab Rocket” delivered to her.

For those of you who may not know, the Ab Rocket is NOT a piece of combustible military weaponry. The Ab Rocket actually combines what you love about rocking chairs with what you hate about crunches to create the ultimate ab toning experience.

I didn’t think too much of it, merely happiness that my neighbor was making a commitment to fitness. I myself had just purchased the Iron Gym, which is a combination pushup/pull-up bar that you can secure into your door frame without any hardware. You can then do as many pull-ups as you’d like until the 24-dollar thing falls apart and you fall and break your ass.

But that hasn’t happened yet (I also haven’t used it in 6 months) so I won’t worry about it.

One day I was in the bathroom… well, ya know, being there, when I heard a very rapid squeaking sound.

 SqueakSqueakSqueakSqueak

It didn’t stop, it just repeated itself over and over again. I strained my ears to see if I could tell what it was. Was my building moving? Was somebody doing construction? Was somebody slowly cutting a hole into my apartment through the bathroom wall? I chalked it up to one or all.

But then I heard it the next day, and the next. Every day at the same time. Always first thing in the morning. And it sounded like it was coming from just the other side of my bathroom wall.

And then it hit me; it must be the Ab Rocket. My neighbor was Ab Rocketing first thing in the morning every morning. I was relieved at my revelation. At least nobody was burrowing into my apartment.

Discovering new activities from my neighbors around me was part of the experience. The new sounds kind of plateaued after a while as I settled in as a permanent resident of my building.

Until one specific night.

I was lying in bed reading when I heard it from the apartment below me:

YeOOOOOOOO

It sounded like a howl, or somebody celebrating. It happened several times and the look on my face was that of “What the…”

I sat up straight in my bed with my brow furrowed as I tried to figure out the sound. But I could do no such thing.

A couple of weeks later I heard it again. It was definitely a man. Was he celebrating a sports team? Couldn’t be, it was too late in the evening. It happened, several times. It still sounded like a shout of joy like maybe he was celebrating… something else…

The beginning of it almost sounded like a slap… like somebody was slapping him and he was screaming. Was he being hazed? Did I live above a private fraternity? Was I just making shit up now?

Quite possibly.

Every so often I would hear it again. The shouts coming in twos, fives, and more. Over and over again I would hear this sound for a short while. Every time I would stop what I was doing and try to use my crap powers of deduction to understand what was going on.

A couple of weeks ago I heard it again. This time there were more shouts than ever. There had to be at least 15 of them. If I wasn’t so terrified of life I might have gone downstairs to knock on his door and ask him if he was OK. But I didn’t because

A. I rarely speak to people in my building
B. I was not really sure I wanted an answer.

But I heard it again last week. And I was sick of it! What the hell was going on? Was it spanking? Because really that’s what I thought it was, and I couldn’t think of anything that made more sense. I lived above a guy who was getting spanked in rapid succession at random times throughout the year almost always before bedtime.

I jumped out of my bed and squatted closer to the floor. The sound was closer and seemed more familiar.

I then sprawled out completely flat and put my ear on the floor. I was shocked at how clear the sound became. It was almost like I was in the apartment with the stranger below me.

And that’s how I figured out:

He was sneezing.

Frigging SNEEZING! All this time and all my conspiracy theories and all it turns out to be is a sneeze. I actually was relieved, if only for the fact that I no longer had to expend brainpower to figure this out. The knowledge was mine.

However, it was also at that point when lying flat on the floor with my ear pressed up against the wooden panels that I realized: 

I need to dust under my bed.

What Not to Run With

2011-10-16T18:58:00.000-07:00

I’ve always been a skinny kid. I don’t just mean that I’ve always been in shape (because I’m not sure I’ve ever referred to myself as “in shape”) but skinny. Muscles have never really been my thing. Sure I’ve wanted them, but they just never really… happened.

When I started playing basketball in high school, weight lifting became a mandatory aspect of our training and practices.

We’d meet in the weight room after school and pair up with a partner of similar strength (which for me meant some other weakling) and take turns lifting and spotting each other. It is amazing how going from never lifting weights to simply lifting weights can make you think you are so much stronger than you were a week ago. When really, you probably are not stronger at all.

 And of course when I say “you” I mean me.

 I spent a lot of time in the weight room after school as well as during summer break. But for as much time as I spent in the weight room, it seems all I did was wait for my muscles to come.

But in my mind, I was jacked, huge, a veritable Adonis. And because I was an Adonis I would try to do things I saw football players do, like… squat with other human beings on their shoulders.

Yes I know my teenage years were not my brightest.

I would pick up my really skinny female friends and throw them over my shoulders and do a couple of half squats with them to show off how buff I was getting. While people probably thought it was funny, I’m not sure anybody truly believed I was strong. Frankly it was a miracle I never dropped any of them.

During this time in my life I took a trip to Louisiana, a state I’d never been to before nor had never given much consideration to.

The fact that I was in Louisiana didn’t really matter as much as the fact that I was thousands of miles from home without my parents hanging out with a dozen kids a year older than me that I was simultaneously in love with and trying to impress.

There were a couple of advisors too.

I was serving on the International Board of this leadership organization I was a part of. It was quite an honor and everybody on the board was smarter, more confident, more talented, or at least taller than I was.

In typical high school fashion (though I’m not sure I’ve stopped doing this) I compensated for my insecurities by making lots of jokes, being extremely loud, and doing ridiculous things.

For the most part it worked out OK, but not always.

We were wrapping up the weekend, checking out of the hotel and getting ready to load up into the 15-passenger van that would drive us all to the airport.

It was about this time that I was saying goodbye to a female friend of mine who just happened to be the tiniest teenage person I’d ever met. She was a few inches shy of 5 feet, and adorable at that. We had a very affectionate relationship, and would regularly hug each other or sit in each other’s lap.

Well, she would sit in my lap; I wouldn’t sit in hers because ya know… I’d crush her.

So we are hugging and I think I started joking about how I was going to take my little friend home with me. So I threw her over my shoulder, which wasn’t that hard to do considering how tiny she was.

But then I started to run.

I want to pause here to let you know that even though it is now 12 years later my stomach is still in knots while I write this. Also, I feel a little nauseous. If that’s not foreshadowing I don’t know what is.

So I start to run and I get about 20 or 30 feet before I start to feel myself leaning forward ever so slightly.

And if you are running with a person on your shoulder, by the time you feel yourself start to lean, it’s already to late.

My hands let go of my friend and go out in front of me as we both start to fall, which doesn’t really help her because she isn’t prepared to fall off the shoulder of the idiot 16 year old who picked her up and started running with her without her permission in the first place.

I don’t remember my exact thoughts as we fell but I’m pretty sure it was something along the lines of:

Holyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshitholyshit

Boom.

We both hit the pavement. I am OK though my friend’s knees immediately start to bleed and she starts to cry. And I shrink to 1/8th my size and feel incredibly embarrassed as everybody, including our advisors come running over to help.

Saying I feel awful is an understatement. I feel so stupid, and embarrassed and disconnected from the group. None of who would ever think it a good idea to RUN WITH ANOTHER PERSON ON THEIR SHOULDER!

Ugh.

I got to hear later on what it looked like as I ran. People told me that they knew it was bad when we fell because when I dropped my friend they saw her bounce.

BOUNCE!

Humans should not bounce off of pavement.

The ride to the airport consists of me apologizing, my friend forgiving me, and then me apologizing again.

Apologize, forgive, repeat.

I get back to New York and I send her a basket of fruit? Teddy Bears? Something that says “Hey I’m sorry I threw you on the ground like a bag of trash”

Since then I cannot so much as think about the story without feeling my stomach tie itself into a handful of knots. I’m not sure I will ever feel good telling the story, not that I should.

But I definitely learned my lesson.

I quit basketball the following year.

Fate and F U

2011-10-10T19:57:00.000-07:00

We had literally JUST talked about it. My buddy Andrew and I had created a new podcast earlier that week called “Nonconfrontational Arguments.” It was our first episode and we were really excited to record it.

We covered a lot of things in the podcast but the subject matter was talking to strangers. We discussed meeting people at parties, how to introduce yourself to people you want to meet, and awkward encounters with randos.

But one of the things we discussed was how neither of us had ever had a meaningful/significant conversation with somebody we met on a train. Our hypothesis being that other people are just so weird that it’s impossibly rare to have a positive interaction.

I have been taking the train regularly for almost 6 years now, and I’ve had a few very short conversations with people. Usually it’s nothing more than catching eyes with somebody and opening them real wide to jointly acknowledge some nonsense happening elsewhere on the train; a crazy preacher type, somebody singing loudly for no reason, or somebody reeking of something awful.

I’ve chatted briefly with people about the book they were reading if it was something I had read. My longest “conversation” had been with the embalmer who had been in prison for 10 years and just started talking to me for 20 minutes because he was drunk or lonely… or both.

Two weeks ago I changed trains to get off the express and get on the local. I do this sometimes because I always get a seat on the local and some days I just don’t feel like standing.

While I was still on the express train the doors opened and I hesitated. Did I have enough time? Sometimes the local can be EXTRA local and take way longer to get to work. The last thing I wanted to do was have a nice relaxing ride to the job I was now going to show up late for. But right before the doors closed I thought the better of it and scooted off the train.

If you’ve never seen me scoot it is quite something.

I get on the local train and get a seat. I pull out the script I was editing for my upcoming play and start crossing out and editing not really paying attention to what was going on around me.

At the next stop a woman gets on and sits down next to me and pulls out a script herself.

That I noticed.

So now I’m immediately curious. Who is she? What is she working on? Should I say something?

Now since I’m still relatively new to play writing and screenwriting, I still feel insecure talking to other people. I figure she is somebody important and if I say something she’s going to feel like I’m some wannabe Hollywood schlub trying to get her to read my script. So I don’t say anything.

And I probably wouldn’t have talked to her at all had she not first spoken to me.

Do you teach screenwriting?

And that catches me off guard because this woman thinks that I look competent enough to teach other human beings how to write movies. I tell her no that I’m just a playwright. And that spurs a conversation that instantly got my heart pumping.

Turns out she is active in the theater world and we have similar views and interests and opinions. In fact, we talk the entire way into the city. She tells me she never takes the train. That she only took the train because she missed the bus today.

We talk about fate. We exchange information. We get off at the same stop. She goes her way and I go mine.

The whole time we were chatting I have been sweating because I am so excited and my heart is beating so fast and I’m trying to appear competent but all I can think is

OH MY GOD THIS IS SUCH AN AMAZING FATEFUL UNIVERSAL COINCIDENCE HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP HOLY CRAP.

So I hustle out of the train station not because I am late but because I am on cloud 9. That is by far the best experience I have ever had on a train and one of the best interactions with a stranger in general.

I’m walking really fast because my energy is just flowing like crazy. And I am a fast walker to begin with so I must have been really flying. I’ve got an extra duffel bag over my shoulder because I was going up to Boston that evening. And I’m hustling along weaving in and out of slow people. I am about to pass this guy in front of me when I realize he is walking pretty quickly and I can’t really get around him, and by that time my bag has hit bumped into him.

Immediately he spins his head around and shoots me a dirty look. And that’s when it gets amazing. I speak first.

I’m sorry.
Yea it’s called consideration!

So now I feel really bad because this guy is really pissed, and when I feel bad my voice goes up.

I’m really sorry, I didn’t mean to bump you.
It’s fine!

But he’s not fine. And he’s turning to go into a coffee shop. I want to say something else.

I hope you have a good day sir.

And I can understand how, considering the circumstances that might sound like I was mocking him or being a jerk. But honestly it wasn’t intended that way. But it obviously did not sound the way I wanted it to because he just pushed into the coffee shop, shook his head, and said almost in a defeated manner:

Fuck You.

Oh well, at least the train ride went well.

Brew at the Zoo

2011-10-02T22:25:00.000-07:00

The sign outside the building was written in both Italian and English. And while the three of us might not have understood the Italian very well, we certainly understood the English:

SOLD OUT

So that was it. While the three of us had taken a three-hour train ride up to Milan to see the city and explore, the primary reason had been to see Leonardo Davinci's painting 'The Last Supper.' But we weren't going to get to see it. We would just be three guys hanging out in Milan eating paninis for a day.

But Chad was cut from a different fabric than Will and myself. While the three of us were all studying Italian at the same school in Florence, Chad was about 10 years older than us. He had also been a self-made millionaire, then bankrupt, then a self made millionaire again and a religiously focused motivational speaker. He wasn't one to call it quits easily.

So he pushed on into the lobby anyway, spoke his broken Italian to the woman at the desk while Will and I looked on cluelessly. And sure enough he ended up getting us tickets. Here I was, used to quitting things quite quickly and accepting the word 'no' as fact, but Todd changed everything. Had it not been for him, I never would have been able to see one of history's most famous paintings. And while seeing the painting was significant, the lesson I learned about persistence was even more significant.

I think of that day a lot. I think of it when roadblocks come up or somebody says something is not possible. I think about Todd saying, "it doesn't hurt to ask." Years later I read an interview with the movie Producer Brian Grazer where he talked about his own personal philosophy on being rejected. And he said:

No is just a moment in time.

I thought of both those things as I called the Franklin Park Zoo in Boston last Monday. My sister lives in Boston and I take the bus up a couple of times a year to hang out for a quick weekend. We were discussing dates when she suggested the coming weekend. She said:

We are going to Brew at the Zoo. It's a beer festival that takes place in the Zoo.

Now she could have just invited me up to Boston to go to the zoo and that would have been enough. But beer AND animals, I mean come on.

Tickets are sold out but the website says they might be available at the gate.

So I went on the website and sure enough it said that tickets had sold out. But the site also said if you were interested in tickets to please call Jessica. It listed her number.

So I called. I got her voicemail. So I left a message like this:

Hi Jessica my name is Richard and I was calling to see if I could get a ticket to Brew at the Zoo this Saturday, I am coming up to visit my sister and I would really love it if we could go to this together. Please let me know if it is possible.

And I left my number.

Tuesday came and I called again. Voicemail again.

Hi Jessica this is Rich. I had called yesterday about possibly getting a ticket to brew at the Zoo this weekend. I am coming up to visit my sister and I would really love to go with my sister to Brew at the Zoo. Please let me know if I can buy a ticket. Thanks so much.

I tried to stress my desire to go as well as my affection and love for my sister without overdoing it. I hadn't yet bought a bus ticket, so my going up to Boston was pretty heavily dependent on getting a ticket to this one of a kind event.

The rest of the day passed with no response.

Wednesday morning I got a call from a strange area code. I answered.

Hello?
Hi this is Jessica from the Franklin Park Zoo.
Hi Jessica, do you have good news for me?
I...

And the way she held out her 'I' was almost sad, like she felt guilty. It sounded like the beginning of a:

I don't. I'm sorry but we can put you on our mailing list for next year and if you'd like to donate to our new Frog and Turtle Arboretum we'd be very appreciative.

But it wasn't remorse that I heard in her voice, it was almost... empathy. She said:

I do. I can't deny you if you are coming to see your sister.

Huzzah! It had worked! My persistent sympathy strategy had worked. I would get to drink beer and see Monkeys or Giraffes or something. Actually I really had no idea how it was going to go because I hadn’t read the website or really done much research on the event because once my sister said the words "Zoo" and "beer" in the same sentence I was hooked anyway.

And it was totally worth it. I go to see a tiny baby Gorilla, a baboony looking thing, a hippopotamus looking thing, and a butt-load of lemurs, bats, and other creatures. We took pictures, we spoke to the animals, and we drank a ton of beer. Some good, some not so good.

But the most important thing was I made it happen. And that's the coolest thing of all.

Green Stone

2011-09-25T20:21:00.000-07:00

By the time I had left Arizona in December in 2005 I could barely breathe.

Though my college experience had been rich and rewarding, at the tail end I felt overwhelmed and unprepared. I wasn't reluctant to leave school, just to enter the post grad world without a path or a plan.

I remember dry heaving the night before graduation. I remember looking around on the morning of graduation at my fellow classmates and not recognizing a single one.

What was happening?

So nearly immediately after returning home to New York I fled to Australia.

I needed time to clear my head and my spirit. One big adventure before I became a working stiff with only two weeks of paid freedom a year. I left. Alone. It wasn't until my North American sneakers touched the Australian pavement that I could actually take my first deep breath in weeks.

It felt like success.

I was in search of excitement and experiences in a land that was just different enough from my own. I had left behind my community, a girl, and friends. Friends, which I would probably never see more than once every other year if I were lucky.

My watch told my story. It was an athletic watch with a spinning bezel on top. Sometime during my last semester the bezel had gotten stuck and no longer spun. It was just locked in place. No matter how much I tried to force it, it wouldn't budge.

Some days into my time in Australia I was fiddling with my watch and all of a sudden the bezel spun again. Just like that. My breath and my bezel, suddenly free. The metaphor was not lost on me.

I walked around streets in every city I visited looking for something I could purchase to symbolize or kick start this next stage of my life. A necklace or talisman or other type of iconography native to this part of the planet. An item unique and worldly, both qualities I hoped people would think about me.

I started noticing necklaces. So many people I met or saw had necklaces of a thin black cord with a white or green stone carved into elaborate symbols or shapes.

Several conversations with jewelry wearing strangers told me the green ones were jade and they came from New Zealand, the last stop on my trip. It seemed appropriate and relevant. It would be perfect. It was of the land of this part of the world.

I wanted a story for it too, I didn’t want it to be something I just bought at a gift shop. So I waited until I went to a traditional Maori Hangi. Kind of like a luau for the native people of New Zealand.

I mulled over a couple of different options before settling on this one.

The green spiral meant renewal or rebirth.

Perfect.

I put it around my neck, tied the knot, and never took it off.

When I returned to the states it was my reminder of where I had been. My symbol of growth, of change, or all the things I hoped this next stage of my life would be.

Typically I had worn cheap necklaces I bought for a summer or a couple of months, rarely much longer. But this was different. I had no desire to take it off. It wasn’t until more than a year later that I had to take it off.

I was part of a modeling competition that mandated no jewelry. So I followed the rules. I didn’t win anyway.

After the competition I considered leaving it off but eventually decided I wasn’t done wearing it, absorbing its benefits or channeling its spirit... Whatever it was that I thought or hoped it did.

I put it back on and realized immediately that I had put it on backwards. Instead of leading out from my collarbone, the spiral seemed to be pointing in.

Maybe this would change my karma. So I left it.

And there it stayed for 4 more years.

Once in a while somebody would comment on or ask about it, but it just became part of me.

I didn’t fiddle with it much but sometimes I would play with it absentmindedly. Feeling the cool circular stone between the pads do my fingers.

Good jade is always cool to the touch I had once heard. I wondered how good mine was? Did it really feel cool or was I just trying to convince myself.

Sometimes I would put it to my lips breathing through the spiral in the middle imagining I was breathing new life into myself. Thinking about the word rebirth.

I never really thought about how long I’d wear it. It never felt flashy or obnoxious. I just liked having it on me.

Last week, in a rare moment of clarity in an otherwise clouded couple of months, I realized; it was time to take it off.

It wasn’t completely unfounded, I had been thinking about it for some time now, months really.

I could feel the sensation bubbling up from deep within me that the time had come. The saddest thing for me seemed that I would never put it back on again. Sure I could if I wanted to but it wouldn’t make sense. It represented a period in my life and maybe a mentality.

And for whatever reason, it just felt like it was time to move on. I put my hands on the thin black cord, which had become frayed over time and gave it a quick yank.

And I didn’t regret it, I didn’t question my decision, I just felt good.

Maybe I didn’t need a talisman for this next stage of my life. Maybe I would be enough.

The Bun Check

2011-09-18T19:37:00.000-07:00

All families have secrets. But as a child you may not necessarily know that they are secrets. They are just part of your life, part of the things your family does, and you don’t find out you shouldn’t share them until it’s too late.

Normally if there was something that was supposed to be just between us my parents would sit my sister and I down and be very clear with us. But I suppose that’s the thing about being a parent, you have no idea what your kids are going to do.

I come from a pretty loving family. As a kid growing up there were no shortage of hugs, kisses and other forms of affection. Every night before going to bed I would give both of my parents a kiss on the cheek before going to bed. It’s something I still do when I stay with them.

We were also affectionate with a family that lived across the street from us. They had three kids who were older than my sister and I. They were as much a part of our lives as our blood relatives. They came to our birthday parties, baseball games, and we went to their weddings, and holidays.

Their kids even babysat my sister and I many times.

Growing up though I was pretty ticklish and a hug from my mother could quickly turn into her tickling me. My neck was especially susceptible to it. For some reason anything that even grazed my neck would make me freak out. I would collapse spasm and wriggle just to get out of having my neck touched.

I was so ridiculous about it that my family and the family across the street started referring to anybody who had a ticklish neck as having a “Richard Neck.” There is something about squirmy little kids that makes adults want to make them squirm even more. I was an easy target.

My neighbors would tickle me too. Any time I was within arm’s reach, there was a pretty good chance somebody was going to tickle the skinny kid.

The youngest of the kids who lived across the street was Lisa. Lisa was babysitting me one day at her house. We were sitting there watching TV when she decided to tickle me. And as I said I am quite squirmy when being tickled. And as she went to tickle my neck, I spasmed and my leg shot out and kicked her.

Lisa never tickled me again.

But it wasn’t the last time anybody was tickled.

We had this thing we did in my family called a “Bun Check.” Typically it was my mother who did it, though I don’t know who actually started it. But she would walk up behind me or my sister while we were washing dishes or not paying attention, grab our tush, and say “Bun Check.”

Really, it was a straightforward process.

We all got in on the action doing it to each other, scaring each other, giggling and generally laughing about the whole thing. In my whole life I’ve never heard anybody else reference this act which makes me pretty sure it was something that only my family did. It wasn’t a trend like high fiving or the hula hoop.

But I didn’t know that, it was a part of our regular life. So as far as I was concerned everybody probably did. My parents never said, “Hey this is something you shouldn’t do with anybody else.”

The oldest of the three kids who lived across the street was babysitting my sister and I one night, her name is Donna.

Now Donna was great. We got along wonderfully and if my memory serves correctly, we were pretty well behaved children. The night had gotten late and it was time for my sister and I to go to bed.

My sister and I’s rooms were both on the second floor. Our house had a staircase with 13 steps that led up to the second floor and the last 4 steps made a left turn to bring you up to the level. My sister led the way to bed that night, followed by Donna, and then myself.

Donna was just about to make the turn up to the second floor when the idea struck me like the most natural thing in the world.

I reached out both my hands, grabbed her butt and shouted:

BUN CHECK!

Well the poor woman let out a shriek and just about fell down the stairs. The look on her face clearly showed that she had no idea what I was doing or what I had actually done.

It was then and only then that I thought to myself… was this something that I shouldn’t have done?

After the scene calmed down I’m sure my sister and I probably explained what had actually transpired, though I imagine my sister (three and a half years my elder) probably had a firmer grasp on the fact that you do not grab the butts of people not in your immediate family.

And I distinctly remember my parents telling me the next day that there were some things that were only OK to do in the house. And the bun check was that the top of that list.

Our families still laugh about that event to this day.

Though needless to say…

The bun check never happened ever again.

This Is Not a Blog

2011-09-11T20:57:00.000-07:00

I remember growing up and hearing my parents complain about bills. Whenever the mail came I would ask what had come and my mom would say;

Ohhhh bills, more bills.

I didn’t understand why we got so many bills. As a child, you don’t get bills. You don’t really get anything. But even by the time I was old enough to get bills of my own (hooray) I could pay some of them online so the arrival of a bill wasn’t really climactic.

Today as an adult I pay nearly all of my bills online so I get hardly any in the mail but there are still some things still come in the mail. They are mostly bills for things that are not recurring, a service rendered or a doctor’s visit. And it is these bills that confuse me.

I was doing my yearly checkups not too long ago; Doctor tests, Dermatologist tests, etc. I’m not a really good patient. I don’t mean I scream and kick and bite, I mean I don’t ask a lot of questions.

Some of my friends question their doctor, asking him or her why they are doing what they are doing, referencing research and studies etc.

I’m not that… bright?

When the doctor tells me he has to do a test, remove something, or stab me with a sharp stick, I pretty much just go along with it because he’s a doctor and I, well… I’m a writer.

Plus doctors don’t really tend to ask you what you want them to do, they just tell you what they want to do. They also don’t tell you the price of things.

Rich I’d like to run this echo cardiogram… and it’s going to cost you 900 dollars.

No. They just do it, bill your insurance, and you don’t find out it actually had a cost until 4 weeks later when you play Russian Insurance Roulette to find out whether or not you’re covered for the life saving preventive test you didn’t even know you needed.

But sometimes you don’t even get a bill, you just get, well… something else.

A couple of weeks after my appointments I got a letter from my insurance referencing some diagnostic lab that apparently processed or did my tests. I didn’t understand the piece of paper except for the bold line at the top that said:

THIS IS NOT A BILL

Now that might not have bothered me if it weren’t for the lines underneath it that said:

Amount Billed:
Discount:
What Insurance Paid:
What I Owe:
You Saved:

OK so let me just get this clear. This is NOT a bill, but you are telling me how much my bill would be if this were a bill (which it’s not) as well as how much my insurance would pay on this hypothetical bill and how much I owe on this non-bill and how much I saved on the non-bill that I don’t have to pay yet.

Oh yea that’s really clear.

Why the hell am I getting a discount? I don’t recall walking into the doctor with a coupon for half off a blood pressure reading. I really resent my insurance company trying to make it seem like they are giving me a deal.

So I just put the piece of paper down (it was 3 pages of non-billdom) and just waited for the actual bill to come.

But it never came.

Instead I got another letter from my insurance that all said in bold letters at the top:

THIS IS NOT A BILL.

Damn it!

What is so hard about sending me a bill? When I go to dinner and it comes time to pay, the waiter doesn’t drop a piece of paper on my table that says "This is not a bill, but if it was, your dinner would cost." No, they just give me a bill and I pay it, and that’s it. End of transaction.

It’s like insurance is a clingy ex girlfriend that refuses to let you move on with your life. She is going to carry on this relationship until you are both so miserable with each other that the mere mention of her makes me scream like a karaoke banshee.

So I continued to wait for the bill. And of course it never came.

I got another non bill. And another. And another. Until I had received 7 different pieces of paper from my insurance, all 3 pages long. That’s 21 pages of non bills all for different things, all for different amounts owed to doctors I had never heard of!

How do I know this Doctor? Why cant I pay the doctor I know? At least he has seen me in my underwear. How can I trust a doctor who hasn’t seen me in my underwear?

And how come the insurance doesn’t know how much they will cover? It’s not like I have fancy blood or magic urine. It’s the same tests you are running on all of your other clients. Come up with a number, and stick to it.

I can appreciate the insurance companies’ desire to communicate what might happen, but at a certain point it just becomes confusing. Just send me a check, tell me how much I owe, and I will pay that amount.

Or maybe I won’t.

Maybe the next time my insurance company sends me something with “NOT A BILL” written on it, I will take out a small rectangular piece of paper and write in the amount I owe. Then, before I put it in the envelope to mail it, I will write at the top in big block letters.

THIS IS NOT A CHECK

Window Pain

2011-09-05T21:13:00.000-07:00

I spent a lot of time staring out my window growing up. It’s just another thing dogs and I have in common (overeating, drooling, barking in our sleep). And I was reminded of that last week when a hurricane hit New York.

Granted by the time the hurricane arrived it was more of a tropical storm. But either way, I was pretty mellow until it hit. I kept playing it down about how I wasn’t that worried and it wasn’t going to be a big deal. Nonetheless I picked up some items from the grocery store and settled in for the weekend.

Friday and Saturday brought nothing much but when Sunday morning hit, the winds were blowing like crazy and the trees outside my top floor apartment were swaying and blowing in a way that kept making me worrying about what kind of insurance I had.

The trees kept swaying dramatically. And seeing how my apartment is next to trees that are probably 100 feet tall I suddenly realized…

I have a very good reason to be concerned.

The trees were bending and swaying so severely that I thought I might be a good idea to not sit so close to my window. And that is tough, because my computer is right next to my window. So I just sat on the opposite side of my living room being afraid of what the hell might happen to my window.

But the windows of my life have not typically been a happy entry point.

I remember being in college where I lived on the first floor of my dorm. It was the handicapped dorm (a story for another day) and there was a window that went from floor to ceiling, about 8 feet high.

My bed was against the same wall as the window and the foot of it lined up just with the edge of the window.

Typically I would stay up late downloading songs from whatever service Napster had given birth to and watching MTV because I had never had cable before and I was absolutely stupid with excitement about it.

Most nights I would fall asleep pretty soundly, sometimes waking up to hear people being loud in the hallway as they stumbled in from being drunk at some frat party or other location that served alcohol to freshmen.

I shared a bathroom with a guy who was also the only person in his room and he was a nice enough kid, an artist who I didn’t talk too much and didn’t think much about.

My roommate had a friend that we’ll call Sara. I liked Sara; she seemed interested in my life and had big nice eyes and an easy smile. We’d interact maybe every other week and that’s about it.

Halfway into my stay at this dorm I was sound asleep in my dorm when somebody started banging on my door like they were part of a S.W.A.T. team. I woke up instantly and pulled my NY Yankees comforter around my neck.

I was terrified. Was it the cops? A robber?

If I had time to actually contemplate I would have realized neither of those could possibly have been true, but when its 2:30 in the morning and somebody is continuously banging on your door all you can think about is whether or not you are going to have to wash your sheets the next morning.

I didn’t move from my bed.

The next morning a kid down the hall came up to me and told me he thought he might have knocked on my door late at night because he wanted to hang out.

I didn’t ask him if he might have been completely out of his ever-loving mind. I just said,

Oh I’m not sure I heard it.

In fact, several people had a predilection for banging on different parts of my dorm room. It was as if there was some sort of notice that had gone out that said:

The Freshman in 1D is insecure and extremely paranoid, please take advantage.

Not too long thereafter I was lying in my bed sound asleep when I somebody started banging on my window like a savage looking for a meal.

Now there is a big difference between somebody banging on your door and somebody banging on your window.

If somebody bangs on your door it could be a variety of explanations. It could be people in danger, police, security, fireman etc.

But when somebody bangs on your window all it can be is somebody who is completely out of their mind or somebody who is trying to kill you.

Mind you it is 4 am. And whoever is outside my window is banging on it over and over again. I am terrified. I am clenching my blanket so tightly that there is no blood left in my hands.

The banging stops and my heart slows down, but just barely.

It is hours before I fall back to sleep.

Several days later I run into my roommates friend Sara. She tells me:

Yea we were hanging out pretty late the other night. I took my friend’s aderall and was banging on peoples’ windows. I think I banged on yours. Did you hear it?

I panic and not wanting to make her feel bad… for scaring the shit out of me while on drugs at 4 o’clock in the damn morning, I say:   No I don’t think I heard anything.

Thankfully, those were the only incidences of people expressing high interest in interacting with me late at night. But regardless of whether I am in a dorm or my own apartment, a loud bang or noise in the middle of the night still makes me wonder when I wake up:

Should I change my sheets?

Train Science

2011-08-28T19:07:00.000-07:00

I am on my way to my birthday dinner in Manhattan. I enter the subway and get down to the platform just as an F train is pulling into the station. I hop on the train and grab a seat between a couple of white college looking kids and a middle aged black man.

The train has barely left the station when a homeless man enters the car and starts singing a song about chicken.

Kind of.

He is “playing” the harmonica and I can’t really tell what he is saying but it sounds like he is singing the song “Feelings” except every time the word ‘feelings’ should appear, he is using the word ‘chicken.’ It is apparently an appeal for somebody to give him some food.

Typically in this situation I don’t make eye contact, I just look down, which is what I am doing now.

I have my legs crossed and am staring at my knee as the homeless man works his way through the train asking people for money. Of course I was the only one he touched on the knee. I can’t stop staring at my knee praying for something else to happen.

So he passes through our car and moves on to the next. The black man to my right takes this as his cue to rant about how dumb it is to sing about chicken.

I have no iPod with me, no reading materials. I can’t even pretend to be immersed in anything. I had planned to lose myself in self-reflective birthday thoughts, but instead I am suddenly part of a conversation I am not participating in.

The black guy next to me is cracking jokes and being extremely loud about the homeless man who just left the train. He is hitting me on the arm like we are old buddies. It is when I turn to acknowledge him that I smell the hot wind of brandy.

And sure enough he pulls out a fifth of V.S.O.P. wrapped in a black plastic bag and takes a big sip.

I don’t say anything, I just smile politely and nod.

The two white kids to my left however, see this as an opportunity to make a new friend. So now drunk guy on my right, and white kids on my right are talking. The white kids start using slang they hadn’t been using before, saying things like “you gotta do what you gotta do” and using words like “hustle.”

My mouth remains shut. And then the drunk guy starts talking about his career in Mortuary Science.

Yep that’s right, he’s a mortician.

And anybody can do it too. Do you know how I know? Well because my new friend tells me right off the bat that he did ten years in prison before getting his Mortuary Science degree and if he can do it, anybody can do it.

He says other things as well but all I can focus on is the fact that I have never sat this close to anybody who has been to prison.

But he goes on. Being a mortician is quite easy. He shares that all you need to do is take the glue and plug the holes.

It’s just all holes. Nose holes, ear holes, pee holes.

At this point the white kids are just eating this stuff up. I have yet to speak but they are asking all kinds of questions. Where he went to school, when he went to school, etc.

And he's not quiet. He is talking loudly, not yelling exactly, but the train is quiet and his voice carries. And I imagine the rest of the train is just as eager to hear his story as we are.

He then tells us a story about how when you die it is possible to die with an erection. How does our friend know this? Well apparently a girl in his Mortuary Science class got kicked out of school for having sex with a cadaver.

And then he makes gigantic masturbatory gesticulations while laughing wildly.

At this point my insides are folding themselves into origamied discomfort.

I also learn that he loves being a mortician it because the gas that preserves dead bodies gets you high:

Ya know because it’s basically just Angel dust. That’s true!

He says that aside from the fact that he gets high, a dead body is

The worst smelling shit of your life. And women stink more than men because…

I’ll spare you the details on that one.

I still have not spoken but the white kids keep egging him on and making puns, acting like this was the first black person they have ever spoken to in their life.

You know what they say about Mortuary Science, people are dying to get into it.

I am so uncomfortable yet I am about as still as a cadaver, somehow thinking that will make this stop. But it doesn’t.

He’s doing quite well for himself. Apparently he is making $120,000 a year but he really wants to go back to school for autopsies.

Because you know, basically I’m a doctor then.

I nod. Because that is the only thing my body will let me do. But now I’m straining my neck trying to see what kind of watch he has on, trying to indiscreetly check out his sneakers. I am trying to gage if this guy is making six figures why is he sitting on a train drinking a fifth of brandy.

He touches on other topics like how he has no idea how to use a computer. And then, he asks me a direct question, which means I have to actually speak. He asks me what I am in school for. I tell him I have been working for six years.

The only benefit of this is he can stop telling me to major in Mortuary Science. But he doesn’t stop leaning into me, over me, exhaling his 80 proof beliefs upon my ears.

Eventually he tells me it makes sense that he hangs out with dead bodies because:

You know, I done killed some ninjas.

Except he didn’t say ninjas. Understand?

So now my heart is in a full out rave panic mode as I try to comprehend when this train ride is going to end and how I am going to get away from the mass murdering mortician who spent a decade in prison.

The train pulls into Queensbridge and he tells us this is his stop. He then gives us all five and leaves us with this piece of advice.

Get into mortuary science.

Then he stood up and I saw he was wearing a Spider-Man t-shirt.

20 Something Summit – Part 2

2011-08-21T23:08:00.000-07:00

I live in New York but I was in Chicago this past weekend for the 20 Something Blogger Summit. I met people from all over the country but nearly everybody I met from Chicago asked me the same question:

What do you think of Chicago?

They asked me as though embarrassed or ashamed, anticipating that I was going to say it disappointed me or paled in comparison to my far larger and more impressive city. This really surprised me because I am in love with Chicago and have been for some time now.

I fell in love with Chicago the way 12 year old girls fall in love with teenage pop stars. I gush about it. I am effusive to the point of obnoxious. I shout out "I LOVE THIS @#$@IN CITY" while cool breezes tousle my short brown locks as I stand on the bank overlooking the river.

I love the layout, and the restaurants, but most of all I love the architecture. I also love the perspective and space between streets and buildings which allows me to appreciate the architecture. I'm not going to argue that New York or Chicago has better architecture than the other. For arguments sakes let's say New York did. You wouldn't be able to appreciate it as much because the buildings in New York are so close together that it is challenging to fully absorb their presence and their footprint.

It's like seeing a person in profile only. You don't get the full picture of what they really look like.

Chicago gives you perspective, you have space and room to look and absorb and ingest and love.

The other thing I love about the Chicago architecture is something I found out on the boat tour I took from the Chicago Architecture Foundation. The buildings of Chicago are not insular as so many of them pay tribute to each other in one way or another. By referencing elements from the buildings next to them or mimicking a similar element or just stopping at the same height. The buildings aren't just independent individuals, they are a part of a community. It sounds silly to say that about inanimate structures. But it is true. The buildings don't compete for your attention. They reflect, and feed off, and truly support each other.

I went to Chicago for this summit not quite sure what to expect. I was excited that I was a panel moderator, but outside of my sole duty from 2:15 to 3:15 pm on Sunday afternoon, I wasn't quite sure what else to would come my way. I didn't know anybody, I had never really interacted with any of these people before, and this would be my first blog conference.

When I arrived the first night for the cocktail party (a situation which I thrive in) I was caught a bit off guard that so many of the bloggers seemed to know each other already, had been to conferences together, or fostered relationships before meeting in person. There weren't a tremendous amount of people there, perhaps less than 100, but yet I couldn't help but feel a bit like an outsider.

An outsider with a Fancy Pocket square mind you, but still, an outsider.

The next day brought sessions, speakers, forums, and a tremendous sharing of knowledge and experience. While I do (still somewhat reticently) refer to myself as a blogger, I really had no idea or concept of people in the same space. You see blogging is a lot like dancing alone in your bedroom in your underwear. You might do it every day, you might tell people about it , but it's very easy to think that you are the only one who does it, and CERTAINLY the only one who does it the way you do.

By the time it came for sessions I fully expected to be listening to speakers with hundreds of thousands of followers who would tell me just how backwards and misguided my approach to blogging was. But instead what I found, were men and women who I had far more in common with than I could have imagined.

They weren't talking about numbers, and in fact, numbers rarely came up. They talked about love, they talked about passion, and they talked about sharing who they are.

That first day, I actually showed up to the first session without a pen and paper, not really expecting to take notes. My half assed brain apparently thought that if I really needed to take notes I could just write them on my phone.

But I immediately regretted my decision to fore-go a pen. I found myself grabbing my phone every couple of minutes, writing down jewels and gems that I just wasn't quite expecting to hear, but was fully committed to remembering.

And as the weekend went on and one session turned into two and then six, every speaker used different words but essentially said the same thing.

Do what you love to do. Find a way to do it more often. Open yourself to the people who love what you love and you will see a windfall of the unexpected.

Speakers constantly referenced other speakers, and then eventually when it came my turn to speak, I did the same. What everybody had said was true. Maybe these positive inspiring quotes and stories were brand new. Maybe I had already heard them in some form before. Or maybe they were things I had already believed in my heart of hearts. But hearing those things out loud from somebody who had found success, reaffirmed those beliefs in a way that might have never come naturally.

On my best days, I tend to think nobody else does what I do, the way I do it. On my worst days, my thinking is far more self destructive. Leading up to the summit I kind of expected there to be an air of competition.

Oh what platform do you use to blog?
How many followers do you have?

Etc. These were all things that I had never concerned myself with before I started blogging but had somehow regularly obsessed over since.

But there was none of that in Chicago. There was talk of a whole lot of social media, mentions of tools I had never heard of, and tweeting beyond what is probably healthy. But there was a genuine interest in furthering and helping not just selves, but others. I left every session having learned something, even if it wasn't something I was going to pursue. Even if it wasn't something I necessarily was interested in learning more about, it still helped frame, contextualize and and support the beliefs and ideas I was building and developing.

People rarely asked about what I did for a living, they asked what my blog was about. They asked how I ended up there. They asked me questions I rarely get asked in my daily life. Questions that felt kind of refreshing.

And that's when I realized that the 20SB Summit was a perfect fit for the city of Chicago. Just as the buildings paid tribute to, reflected, and supported each other, so did the bloggers of this conference. Whether you were there to talk or learn, whether you cared about photography or monetizing, there was an interconnectivity you could not deny.

I was inspired by the things other bloggers were doing, but also humbled by their warmth and their openness toward each other. At times it made me feel like a self centered narcissistic coot, somebody who wasn't nearly as open or supportive as he claimed to be. And yet by the time I actually had to physically walk away from the last remaining group at the conference, I felt sadness. Sure there had been awkward, frustrating, or uncomfortable moments, but when searching for adjective, incredible was the only one that felt appropriate.

There are millions of bloggers that can exist in this same space and not compete. Nobody needed to defend Chicago just as nobody needed to defend being a blogger. This particular weekend in Chicago, everything was working together rather than trying to outdo.

There's no limit to the amount of words a blogger can use, nor the amount of bloggers that can exist in the world. Indeed, there is enough love, passion, and support to keep everybody loving and blogging for a very long time.

The 27 Club

2011-08-14T20:31:00.000-07:00

It’s called the 27 Club or the Curse of 27.

It's made up of famous musicians who died at the age of 27. The “Club” is quite large but there is a core group that trumps the others in terms of talent and fame. They died for the following reasons:

Poisoned
Drowning
Asphyxiation
Heroine
Heart Failure
Suicide
Alcohol

All in all, it is a pretty terrifying list of words.

I am not a musician unless you count the one song I taught myself on guitar or the 8 years I blew at the trumpet (pun intended). But after some considerable internal debate I have started to consider myself an artist as of late. And whether it be film, music, or some other art form, the link between intense creatives and flaming out in a terrifyingly public manner at early ages is irrefutable.

It has crossed that point where I have begun to wonder if some people embrace the 27 Club as a self fulfilling prophecy, a right of passage, or just inevitability.

Now I don't consider people like Joplin or Cobain my peers. Indeed the only peers they have are those in the same Club or the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame. I do however believe I have a certain understanding of the creative mind, and what it feels like to be overwhelmed by your ideas.

It can sometimes seem like trying to push 500 pounds of putty through a pinhole. And what that can do to your mind, heart and soul can be overwhelming.

It also depends how you view creativity. If you believe that there is no muse and that those of us lucky enough to create are merely catching the tail of a passing idea and pinning it down, then the idea of the flame out might seem a bit narcissistic or attention seeking.

If you believe that ideas, art, and music come from deep inside individuals, and that those individuals are responsible for creating these sometimes wonderful things that we then all digest, then you might see how that kind of pressure could drive someone mad.

But regardless of what you believe, that is just the process of creating. It doesn't account for things that can happen afterward if you are lucky enough to be successful. Things like fame and success and wealth. Those factors alone can turn a normally solid mind and body into mush.

I turned 28 this weekend. Part of it is frightening and part of it is a relief. The latter is because I have every intention of becoming a wildly successful creative type, and I have made it over one of the key hurtles… living past the age of 27.

My buddy at work who sits next to me never misses an opportunity to remind me about the 27 Club. At last I can relax about that and concentrate on all the terrible awful things that can behold a 28 year old.

But the part that scares me most is actually just being a 28 year old. I am not one to condescend to people younger than me because I think they don't know as much or have seen as much as me.

Quite the opposite. So many of my friends who are younger than me I find so much more impressive than myself. People so intelligent or talented that they have been able to achieve incredible things at an age earlier than I.

I constantly find myself looking up the online profiles of actors, writers and directors to see how much time left I have to achieve success at the age that they did, or, if they achieved it before me.

But 28 is three years past 25 which is the age I had originally targeted for myself to be and feel brilliantly successful. Now mind you I had really no idea what I was going to be or do or how I would achieve that brilliant success… I just knew 25 was the year to make it happen.

I know it had something to with my camp counselor in 7th grade telling me he was 25 and in his prime. He was a guy I really looked up to. He told me stories of girls, of partying and living this awesome life. All things I wanted for myself one day.

But having a goal without a plan is fools’ work.

I actually didn't even start the thing that I was passionate about and in love with enough to follow to success until the month before my 25th birthday. So looking at it now, it was probably unfair to put that pressure on myself to succeed when I had no idea how I was going to do it. It's like saying you want to be a millionaire but never leaving your couch.

Well I am now off the couch of my early 20s and am on my feet up and moving around in my 28 year old skin. And while it's nice to feel like I am making strides toward my goals, I have so many goals that sometimes it feels like I am just striding in circles.

And of course I worry about flaming out, about losing inspiration, or losing my creative abilities. I worry about it a lot. And the more I think about how much I worry about, the more neurotic it makes me about the whole thing.

And I haven’t even done anything yet.

But whatever the club, whatever the age, I am gradually moving my creative pieces into place, almost like playing Risk.

And it is quite an apt metaphor as it is a risk to expose yourself like that, to take chances, and to put yourself out there with your art, words, or music. But I am moving these pieces into place, slowly but hopefully surely. And I will continue to.

Because I would rather be a part of the club that tries and fails, than the one that never tried at all.

20 Something Summit – Part 1

2011-08-07T21:05:00.000-07:00

I’m going to Chicago.

And the crowd goes wiiiilllld.

No seriously there will be a crowd, or at least a gaggle. There will definitely be a gaggle. Why? Because I am going to moderate a panel at the first 20 Something Blogger Summit in Chicago.

I know what you’re thinking, a summit? Yes it’s THAT important. It’s kind of like the economic summit at Davos, but instead of captains of business from the most important countries, we have captains of content from the most important platforms, I.E. YouTube, Twitter, Blogger etc.

And also there will be few to none very old white haired dudes at this Summit.

 I mean I’m going grey a little early but it’s not something I really want to talk about right now.

Any way, this conference is for bloggers in their 20s of all variety. If there’s a 20 something out there bemoaning their existence or making others giggle, you can be sure they will be finding their way to this conference.

So what does moderating a panel involve? Well there are many panels with many different moderators but here is what my panel is sure to involve:

Candy
Shenanigans
High Leg Kicks (technically most people would file this under shenanigans but I take my leg kicks very seriously)

But otherwise it’s a panel about Video blogging and how to rock at it. I’ll be joined by two awesome individuals who most likely will kick so much ass they will sprain their foots, or feets, or... feet.

But Rich, that’s just 45 minutes of a very full weekend in one of the greatest cities in the world. Is there anything else involved or will it just be a bunch of nerd types nerding out about their nerdery?

Surely not brave soul, in fact, I anticipate it being quite the outrageous affair.

Think about it, I am going to Chicago to hang out with roughly 200 people I do not know and have never met before, and I could not be more excited about it. Because unlike some people, I love strangers. LOVE THEM! I love them so much it’s scary.

Here is why:

Strangers are a blank canvas. Nobody knows anything about each other, so the bonding often has to be accelerated, and you're really just looking to see the cool parts of each other. Wait, not like, I didn't mean those parts, I mean...

When a bunch of people who don’t know each other get together somewhere very cool, it can be extremely awkward or it can be extremely awesome. Sometimes, it’s both.

But this is Chicago… in the summer… and we are in our 20s! This is the prime of our lives (at least, I tell myself that). And this isn’t like the annual accounting retreat. This is something a large majority of us don’t get paid to do. We do it out of love, and when you love to do something you love to share that with other people.

So how do we further/capture the crazy ‘nanigans that will ensue?

Well, based on my experience at Hotel Thrillist last year in Miami, a series of progressively more awkward social interactions since then, and a batch of poor ideas I have had recently, I have created a list:

1. Those of you that remember my time in Miami last year might recall that my white pants made their debut. It was an epic debut filled with thunderstorms, late night pool parties, and a whole lot of a liquid called Torched Cherry.

I am proud to say that as soon as I can find them, I will be packing my white pants for Chicago too! This will surely cue up the good times.

2. I am bringing my video camera. There’s nothing I like more than editing a weekend of video content into a sexy short music vid put to a song I don’t own the rights too. Hopefully I can get people to say silly things, do silly things, or hold the camera while I do both.

3. The weekend of the summit is the same weekend as the Air and Water Show in Chicago. And if there are two things I love, it is air and water. The city will have an adrenaline injected energy that will infuse everybody in the city. Especially the bloggers. Don’t underestimate our adrenaline!

4. Two people who I sit next to at work, who are not related, nor connected in any way except for our job, will be going to Chicago of their own separate volitions for the very same weekend! What are the odds? Now I know this doesn’t affect anybody else, but it’s just really cool.

In fact for a while, I was considering having the two of them crash the Summit as my personal security team. But when I told my one coworker I would refer to him as my 'manservant' he seemed less than enthused and the idea quickly died.

But more than anything this is the first of something. Everybody always wants to be there for the first time something happens. It is what charts the course for the future of the event. It is when traditions are started, when expectations are met, or surpassed, and when that which is unscripted gets recorded.

Plus if you go to the first Summit and keep coming back year after year you can say things like, “oh you should have been here for the first one!”

See? Doesn’t that seem like something that would be cool to say?

So I will be in Chicago, living it up, tweeting, maybe blogging, and definitely filming. It is going to be an incredible weekend.

Even if I can’t bring my manservant.

Signs Signs Signs, Times Times Times

2011-07-31T20:00:00.000-07:00

I like ice cream. Shocking, I know. I try not to keep sweets in the house because I don’t know how to stop eating them. I’m really good at starting but I don’t know how to close a box of cookies, or put away a container of ice cream.

So since I don’t keep that stuff in my house, what happens is I usually end up jonesing for some ice cream, go down to my building’s bodega, buy a ridiculously overpriced five dollar pint of Ben and Jerry’s and stress about how much money I am spending.

Since this summer it has been roughly 32 million degrees in New York every single day, I have been eating a lot of ice cream. I took this as a sign to stop spending my entire paycheck at my bodega, and actually invest in a half-gallon of ice cream from the grocery store. This turns out to be roughly the same price as a pint from my bodega.

So I picked up some Mint Chocolate Chip, brought it home, and upon opening it noticed a little something on the label.

Snaps tight to lock in freshness? Awesome. Safety tab? Umm… necessary?

Safe for who? What is the danger here? Is the danger that the ice cream will spill out and melt all over the floor? Yes, that is a concern, but dangerous? I guess it just depends on your definition of danger. But then again most people’s definition of danger does not involve ice cream. It’s a half-gallon of ice cream, not opium. I think people can be trusted with it.

Now, will somebody possibly eat to much? Sure. Could they get a brain freeze? Yes, yes absolutely. But I am still not sure what the safety concern is. And any danger that can be alleviated by an easy to open “tab” is really no danger at all.

A real danger we face though, is running out of time. Life moves fast and we might not have enough time to get to work, catch the train, etc.

But as busy as we are, I just don’t see a need for this.

It’s called fast food for a reason. You are not ordering Osso Bucco or a Pork Loin or a Flan. It is food cut into squares. And the place has a drive through. From order to delivery it’s like 4 minutes. I don’t care how fresh the establishment claims their food is, Julia Child isn’t in the back whipping it all up the moment you order it.

I don’t see how ordering online speeds up how fast you actually get your food. If it were phone ordering, I would say OK awesome, that is faster. You can do that in the car on the way over. But online ordering you actually have to sit down at a computer (or an iPad you fancy sonofabitch) and take the time out of whatever you are doing to order your food.

Whereas if you had just gone to the drive through, you would have been able to place your order, and then send your emails, knit an afghan or whatever it is you do all while your food is prepared.

Online ordering doesn’t save you any time unless of course you just don’t like being at a fast food location, which means you probably don’t feel good about eating fast food, which probably means you are using the Internet to compensate for your feelings of self loathing. And who can really blame you? I mean we as a society have built up the idea of social networking to such an unbearable breaking point that to live our lives without being constantly plugged in is quickly draining ourselves of our ability to tolerate any kind of interaction that has to take place outside of the comfort of our own social media space when….

Woah.

Sorry about that.

What I meant to say was, um… just eat healthier.

One way to eat healthier is to grow your own food. I won’t tell you how to do that because I don’t know how. And also because I’ve had 3 plants in my life and I’m only operating at a 33% success rate with having kept them alive.

I know plants need water and that’s about it. But if growing things is for you, you should definitely invest in seeds. From what I hear, most plants start out as seeds.

As for what seeds to buy, I am flipping clueless. But upon a recent visit to the garden aisle of a home store, I realized I do have a preference in my seeds. First I came across these seeds:

Cool, vegetable seeds. That seems straight forward enough. However, when compared to the seeds next to them…

They really pale in comparison. I mean who was the copywriter that worked on this marketing ploy?

Smith: OK so um, I’ve got these vegetable seeds here, so I made a sign that said Vegetable seeds.
Johnson: Good job Smith, what about these seeds over here?
Smith: Oh I don’t know what kind of seeds those are.
Johnson: Well how will you describe them then?
Smith: How about…um… seeds that grow?
Johnson: BRILLIANT! You’re promoted instantly!

What kind of seeds are they? Who cares? They grow! That is all that matters here people and if you don’t understand that, well then you obviously know nothing about plants.

They person who wrote this copy should be working for every brand in America.

Introducing:  Pants that fit!
Candles that burn!
Cars that drive!

It’s just about the laziest advertising there is. I can think of a million other instances where that might work.

But maybe we can just apply it desserts, most specifically ice cream. We could even put it right on the packaging.

“Ice cream that’s safe.”

Ya know, because of that tab.

My Bazooka of Peace - Part 2

2011-07-24T19:51:00.000-07:00

Walking into a strange place where I don’t know anybody is something I have done many times in my life. However, that doesn’t mean that I am extremely comfortable with it. Quite the opposite, I get nervous, my heart races and I get butterflies.

So I combat that by making jokes with strangers to make friends. This works at conventions, group job interviews, or birthday parties.

It does not work at Yoga.

On my first day of Yoga I am the second person to arrive in the classroom. The only other person there is another guy who is dressed all in white. I’m not really sure what I am supposed to be doing, so I just watch him and mimic.

He rolls out his mat, so I do the same.

He then walks over to a shelf and grabs 2 heavy blankets and a pillow which he then brings back to the mat.

I have absolutely no idea what these are for, but I do the same. So now I’m sitting on my Yoga mat, with 2 blankets and a pillow. Wait, is this a nap class? Nap Yoga? Is that a thing? This is going to be way easier than I thought.

The other guy kneels in front of a small altar at the end of the room, lights a candle and says a prayer to himself. I realize now that he is the teacher and I should probably leave the altar alone.

He then busies himself with some other preparations. Other people have come into the room now. But since I have already grabbed my nap kit I'm not sure what I should be doing. So again, I try to do what other people are doing.

My immediate instinct is to start chatting with people. But before a Yoga class starts, it’s pretty frigging quiet. It is like everybody has suddenly entered his or her own personal space.

People are lying on the floor with their eyes closed, they are touching their toes, they are standing on their head.

So right away, I’m not going to be able to relax by making friends. And I’m also not going to be able to chat out my nervous energy; I just have to sit there. And sitting still and being silent are two things I have NEVER been good at. I’ve been moving around and making noises since I was in the womb.

What’s sad is that the movements and noises are almost identical to what they were 27 years ago.

Some people are already sitting with their legs folded over each other, and since my body is incapable of that, I just lean back on my hands like I’m sitting in a field.

And I know I should be focusing on meditating and being at peace in the space, but I can’t help but stare at people and think a million things.

How old is that woman?
That chick has an intense yoga outfit.
Isn’t that guy to fat to bend?

And so on and so forth.

At this point all I can hope for is that I don’t accidentally fart during class. I know this is supposed to be a peaceful supportive environment and that is a natural bodily function but I haven’t been able to let myself fart in front of anybody I’ve ever dated, so I’m certainly not going to be able to break peaceful wind starting now.

Class starts and immediately we launch into chanting. I am immediately uncomfortable because chanting “om” out loud is not something I ever do. And singing “hari om” over and over again takes me right out of my comfort zone. The only thing that makes it better is that our eyes are all closed.

I don’t really know what I’m saying but I’m keeping an open mind. It feels vaguely like when I would go to church as a small child. You stand there mumbling the words to prayers you hear every week without really knowing what they mean but knowing it’s supposed to be good for you.

The only difference is I never had to try and touch my toes in church.

We finish chanting and do warm-ups. And then we start doing poses. It feels good to pose. My crumpled self is slowly starting to come out of its crumpled self. This could work. I can feel the benefits already.

The class progresses and I am able to things like the fish pose, or downward dog, or sun salutation. Though the teacher first pronounces things in their native origin. So what I hear is: 

Alright now we will be doing Samjamaramarubadub or Locust Pose.

I am very grateful for intro level instruction.

Then we end the class with breathing exercises and deep relaxation.

The deep relaxation is my favorite part. We lay on the ground with our eyes closes. We should be meditating, but it is all I can do just to stay awake and not add snoring to the list of bodily functions I have exercised in this class.

The breathing exercises are slightly more challenging. One of them involves breathing in and out very quickly 25 times. It’s actually quite simple but I won’t understand how to do it until the third class I take, and instead of breathing in and out, I just keep breathing out and am really shocked when nobody else is wheezing by the 10th breath.

The other breathing exercise involves closing one nostril at a time and then breathing into and out of that nostril. This makes extremely paranoid since this process is what some people use to blow what is called a “snot rocket.”

I’m just trying to get into this Yoga thing, the last thing I need to do is launch a booger onto the foot of the person next to me. I mean it was all I could do not to fart on her.

But in the end all of my boogers stayed in their cave and as for breaking wind, well let’s just say nobody heard anything.

My Bazooka of Peace - Part 1

2011-07-17T20:20:00.000-07:00

Based on recent events (and by “recent events” I mean unbearable back pain and my doctor telling me my neck muscles look like that of an “old man”) I have started doing yoga.

Some of you may remember I tried yoga on the beach in Miami with what might be called no success. Unless you define success by sweating profusely, tipping over and falling into the sand so that I looked like a gangly sugared pastry, in which case I was the most successful person in Miami.

I made a commitment to do yoga back in January. So naturally, I bought my own yoga mat in April.

I bought my own mat because the idea of lying on the floor.... on a thin piece of foam.... that hundreds of other people have done whatever on, really, really grosses me out.
Plus I have a friend who got ringworm on her arm from the equipment at her gym and she showed it to me and it was gross. And once you’ve had/seen ringworm it’s reason enough to never ever touch anything ever again.

Plus I figured if I bought a mat, I would be more committed to doing yoga instead of always saying “ohh I don’t have a mat.”

So I got a mat, unwrapped it (It’s blue!) and placed it in the fancy yoga mat holder I purchased for it.

I then moved it out of the way and put it in the corner of my living room. And that is where it has been sitting for the last two months.

It’s not that I don’t want to go to yoga. I really, really do! I am extremely worried that my body will continue to atrophy until I walk around town at a 90-degree angle and start talking to dogs because they are the only things I can make eye contact with.

The main challenge is I don't have very much time in my schedule (what the hell takes up all my time I couldn't tell you) to go and do yoga. And also it’s expensive. I know there are super duper cheap places, but the places in my neighborhood are between 10 and 20 dollars a class.

Weekends are usually pretty full with projects I have invented for myself or I am too lazy or too busy eating two bagels at a time to get my life together enough to go sit in a room with a hunch of strangers and bend my body into a bunch of positions that could instantly snap my bones like a pile of stale churros.

And weeknights are tough because I try to use those nights to write, podcast or if I am lucky enough... see my friends.

Mornings are out of the questions because... well... because its early dude! And while I have a lot of energy early in the day, having the energy for a physical activity is different.

Sometimes I will see somebody at work with a yoga mat and say to them:

Hey are you doing yoga after work?
No, I went before work.

And then I instantly feel the need to put down the box of munchkins I am holding to tell them every healthy aspect of my life that is healthy and natural and good.

But the pain from sitting at a desk is really starting to get to me. I slouch like I’m melting into the floor. I try sitting up straight, but that is usually if I have a wedgie I can’t discreetly get rid of. I don’t try to slouch, it’s just I end up sliding down into my chair which is just more comfortable for me, but then I end up in more pain because the comfortable chair position is killing me slowly.

I tried getting one of those ergonomic chair attachment thingies that slide over the chair and give your back a natural arch. But I think it’s too severe and I can’t help but feel like it is trying to force me to try and type with my pelvis.

I tried different iterations of it, moving it up, moving it down, and turning it upside down. I can’t get the damn thing to feel good.

Since that thing is not really working, and since my doctor made me realize my body is turning into something decrepit I realized it was time to make time to get into shape.

It just so happened that my doctor visit coincided with availability of a Groupon for a month of unlimited yoga at a third of the normal prize. Before I even bought the frigging thing I was telling everybody I was going to do it. After I had told about 7 people I realized I hadn’t actually done anything yet, so I quickly bought the Groupon.

Really it was perfect timing, serendipitous even. The gods of discounts knew that I was both thrifty and out of shape. All I had to do was buy this Groupon and I could quickly become one of those people who swears by yoga, and tells everybody how amazing it is and what it does for them.

I wanted to be one of those people.

So on the day of yoga, I grabbed my mat, slung across my back and walked out the door. Immediately I felt different. I felt like I was important or something. I felt like people must be looking at me thinking, oh yea, he's bendy, he does yoga.

When in reality nobody probably gave a crap about me. I did feel kind of strangely powerful, like a was carrying a cannon on my back. Except, a cannon that made people feel better and more at ease. My bazooka of peace.

And my bazooka of peace and I went to our first class where I would quickly feel better about myself.

But as I would quickly find out, it was not going to be that easy.

No TV

2011-07-10T20:20:00.000-07:00

I don't watch a lot of TV. I used to, but not anymore. I’ll watch the games during football season, but that’s about as regular as it gets. People make fun of me for this. A lot of people start conversations with me that go, "Hey Rich did you see.... oh yea, of course not."

I don't watch much TV for several reasons. First off, I don't have cable so I only get like 8 channels (not including the 15 Spanish channels my TV receives). My TV is also a monster. It’s from my parents’ old basement. And it’s like a 46 inch TUBE TV, so it weighs about 23,000 pounds.

But really the main reason is that when I am watching TV, I am not doing anything else. I don't write as much, I don't consume as much culture I just kind of… exist on my couch.

Since I rarely watch TV, when I do watch it, certain things get burned indelibly into my brain. Things like commercials.

And what bothers me about commercials is that they suck. Not just that they are bad (although most of them are bad) but the fact that the story telling is so falsified.

I mean I know believing everything you see or here in commercials is dangerous. And I don't do that, but even still, they are so way off that I can't even handle it.

For example, take commercials for paint. I have painted before. I painted my entire apartment. I know what it’s like, how long it takes, etc. But TV paint commercials are completely misrepresenting how difficult it is to paint a room. The people in paint commercials are freaks of nature.

First of all they always paint in khakis, a polo shirt, and a do rag. And they always just kind of look around the room in beautiful reverence paint a little bit, and then cut to them admiring their work they finished on the same day.

And they never have any paint on them! Not a drop. There's no paint on the floor, there are no drop cloths, no painters tape. It's just time to start, oh look let’s paint perfectly together beautiful spouse of mine, oh look at that we’re done.

Oh and how about that, our clothes are still in perfect shape. Oh wow and we just painted 12 walls and our backs don't hurt and hey look its still light outside. Let's go for a jog!

Now if that were real life it would be pitch black outside, those people would have paint in their eyelashes, and they would be curled up in the fetal position on the floor holding a beer and a slice of pizza. But no, paint commercial couples look at each other, grab each other’s hands, and skip off into the sunset.

Shaving commercials also piss me off. Like most people, I have very important things on my face... like my mouth. And if I shaved my face as fast as those guys in commercials do, I would have shaved it off. They shave so fast that at the rate they show, every man should be able to shave his entire face in 29 seconds.

People in commercials shave while smiling and looking at the camera instead of at the BLADE IN THEIR HAND! Hello! That is a blade, or in the case of today's razors, 12 blades. Be careful with that shit and stop telling me how I can swipe it across my face the same way I might wipe chocolate sauce off my cheek. It is a sharpened piece of steel, not a napkin.

And all these commercials where they “surprise” men in gym locker rooms shaving their face to challenge them to use a new razor. First of all, nobody believes that’s real. And second of all, do you know what the legal ramifications would be for sneaking up on somebody holding a razor next to their face?

Every shaving commercial should have the same message:

Hey guys, do you have hair on your face? Do you use our razor? Well be careful! Our razor is ridiculously dangerous!

But shifting to non-violence, my last commercial frustrations are those for laundry detergent. Apparently the science behind laundry detergent has really come leaps and bounds the last couple years because it is so concentrated now it seems like you can go 20 years on the same bottle of detergent.

It’s 3 times concentrated, not it’s 5 times concentrated, no 10. Use a half a cap full, no a teaspoon, no a drop, no actually just wave the bottle of detergent above the washing machine and it will do the work magically. You don't even have to open the bottle. On bottle will last you a lifetime.

I fully expect to walk into the detergent aisle of the store and just see some product that comes with an eyedropper for you to dispense your cleaning liquid.

I have a hard time believing all of these claims since when I do my laundry and start to pour the tiniest bit into the machine I almost always doubt myself and say, no you know what, I should add more. I just feel safe with too much as opposed to too little.

But I suppose part of it is my own fault since I buy the unscented detergent, I can’t tell if my clothes smell clean just… not dirty. Who knows, maybe I am not the target clientele for these advertisers. Maybe there is some other breed of super human to whom these products apply.

But then again if you can shave your face in 29 seconds and paint your entire house effortlessly without spilling a drop, you probably have no need for detergent anyway.

Jerk.

Age Before Beauty

2011-07-04T21:01:00.000-07:00

Let me be clear about something. This is not a rant about how I am so old and I know so much and my life is so full of experience etc. No. I am pretty comfortable with my position in life. I’d like to be smarter, I’d like to be more successful, but other wise, I am pretty comfortable.

My body on the other hand, seems to have different ideas about things. My body seems to be aging rapidly in some discreet (and not so discreet) ways that I don't notice on a regular basis.

The first is my gray hair. Now I have been going gray for a while, pretty much once you get your first gray hair you are "going gray." I was like 18 or 19 when I saw my first. I didn't think about it much.

But seeing as I am only 27, there is a very bit of the gray music playing its way around the sides of my hair. And people feel the need to point this out to me on a regular basis. But they always do it in a way that actually leaves no response.

Ohh going a little gray there are we?
Um... no. No we are not. This is not a joint venture. I am doing this by myself. In fact I am not doing it myself because I'm not doing anything. It's just happening.

It's like when people ask me if I am growing a beard. Well, technically by nature of being alive I am always growing a beard. But even still, it is not something I do intentionally. I just trim it once in a while so the question should be are you trimming your beard.

And did you ever stop to think that maybe I’m not going gray, maybe you are just going colorblind?

I don't notice my gray hairs as much as when I get my hair cut and notice a fair amount of the ones falling into my lap are of the silver variety.

Which brings up another point. People always say you are going gray. They never say you are going silver. No the adjective silver is reserved for the highest complement you can give an aging man which is to call him a Silver Fox.

This is something I have been called several times recently.

Oh Richard, you're going to be a Silver Fox.

Here is what I know of a Silver Fox. They are somebody who has gone prematurely gray and is thereby more handsome because of this seemingly bemusing appearance.

So when people say I am going to be a silver fox, what they are essentially saying is that I am going to be attractive one day, which means I am not yet attractive, which means...

Well, let's just leave it at not yet attractive shall we?

Everybody is so concerned with what they are going to be. I don't want to be a Silver Fox, I want to be a Rich Boehmcke. In fact, I AM a Rich Boehmcke. Here I am. Look at me, unfox-like as I am.

What is the opposite of a fox? What is the opposite of something compact, gray, and sleek? Maybe a... Giraffe? I guess that's what I am, a brown giraffe. Yeah, now that's a compliment. Actually Brown giraffe makes me sound like my skin has the capacity to tan. OK, Pale Giraffe. Now we're talking.

But one way in which I am not like a fox or a giraffe is that fact that I am incredibly out of shape. I don't appear to be out of shape upon first glance. My pants fit and I don't eat Doritos for breakfast, but it’s a more covert out of shape.

When my life has gotten busy, as it is currently, I only work out like once a week or once every other week due to what is scientifically known as "laziness."

But when I go to do something extremely physical I might be able to perform at the level of competition, be it playing basketball or going for a jog. But for days afterward my body feels like an old erector set that was left out in the rain for a month. I can actually hear my joints oxidizing.

This past week my company started its softball league. We had a lot of fun but I didn't see that much action in the field and I only got up 3 times. Granted I ran like hell each time. The first two times I got up, I singled. The third time I fouled off a pitch and ran hard to first base. It wasn't until I got there that I realized it was a foul ball. So i jogged back to the batter's box, picked up my bat and immediately thought to myself:

Oh my god I’m going to pass out. There’s no way I can remain standing. Dear god give me the strength to swing this bat.

My legs were trembling. My arms were trembling. I think my ears were even trembling from the exhaustion of having to flap in the breeze as I ran like a speeding... sheep.

So I swung and hit a long fly ball into the outfield and luckily adrenaline took over I was able to make it to first base, second base, all the way to third. I was able to stop only because I no longer had the capacity to run.

We ended up losing the game, which was fine. We went out for drinks and had a good time. However, when I woke up the next morning I felt like I had been beaten by a gang in a dark alley.

In fact I was so sore I could barely walk without moaning. When I sat at my desk I couldn’t cross my legs without a winch and pulley system. This is a pain that has yet to go away.

So while I may not complain of being an old man, my body is apparently trying to beat me to the punch. So instead of striving to be Rich Boehmcke, an attractive man, I’ll just have to settle for my newest aspiration:

Rich Boehmcke: The Gray Giraffe.

I Used to Steal

2011-06-26T19:23:00.000-07:00

My parents don't know this but I used to steal. It was nothing big, nothing that could ever get me in serious trouble with the law, mostly just candy. It wasn't something I did a lot, just something I did when I was really jonesing for some sugar and didn't have any money. And what 8 year old actually has money? And besides I almost never got caught.

Almost.

I was obsessed with candy as a child. I used to get a 2 dollar allowance for doing my chores which included cleaning the bathroom and taking out the trash. I spent most of it on a candy called Nerds, tiny neon colored shaped pebbles of pure sugar. I bought boxes and boxes, often finishing them before I could walk the 2 blocks back to my house. I also bought War Heads and Tear Jerkers and other violently named candy.

I remember one night being in the car with my family coming home from some function. We all were in our usual seats. Dad was driving, I was in the backseat behind him, mom rode shotgun, and my sister behind her. We were almost home but for some reason we stopped at a 7-Eleven convenience store.

As soon as we got in the store I saw a gigantic York Peppermint Patty. One of the big ones. The ones they ate in the commercials where people bit into a York Peppermint Patty and immediately launched off a ski jump or dove off a cliff. I wanted one so bad. So when nobody was looking I grabbed one and discreetly put it in the pocket of my coat.

I was so eager to eat it I was nearly convulsing. We got back into our car and as soon as our doors were closed and the dome light was out, I turned toward the door and discreetly unwrapped my treat. I could barely contain my excitement.

I took great pains to not make noise when unwrapping it, and even greater care not to breathe out in the general direction of the car. I knew that if anybody smelled my minty exhalation I would be found out. So I took small bites and carefully exhaled slowly into my shoulder so as not to scent the air too much. And amazingly, I made it all the way home without being found out.

I had tempted the gods of candy and gotten away scott free. However the next time I tempted the gods, I would not be so successful.

It was the holidays. My dad, sister and I were at Roosevelt Field Shopping mall to find a gift for my mother. I was wearing my black, white, and hot pink winter coat along with my matching hot pink knitted hat with the pom pom on the end of it.

We went into a store called World Imports. It was a store that sold things that might be classified as novelty. Posters, and figurines, gag gifts and those knocked over cups with the spilled beverage that looked real, but weren't.

As a child it was a fun store to be in. Never had so much useless stuff been gathered in one place.

We entered the store and while my father and sister actually went to find a gift, I drifted off to look at random crap. As usual. I gravitated towards the candy. The candy here was different than the candy I was used to. Here it was more unique, more playful, contained in little dispensers that were wholly unnecessary but incredibly appealing.

My eyes settled on a tiny gumball machine no taller than a salt shaker filled with miniature hard pieces of colorful gum. I wanted it. Knowing my dad would probably not agree to it. I discreetly (or so I thought) slid the candy piece off of the shelf, and into my pink pom pom'd hat.

In retrospect, dressing in hot pink is a bad way to avoid the attention of others. Trying to steal something by hiding it in a hot pink transportational device is even worse.

I had barely turned around when I saw him. A big bald security guard dressed in plain clothes who quickly took the hat out of my hands. He got on his radio and immediately called his manager.

This was it. I was going to jail. My Christmas present was going to have to be bail. My heart raced but I said nothing. I didn't plead my innocence or beg for forgiveness. I just stood there like the neon criminal I was.

Meanwhile I panicked that my dad and sister would come back to the front of the store and see me standing next to baldy. By some stroke of luck they hadn't yet emerged from the back of the store.

And the whole time the security guard just stood there, shaking my hat like a day-glo woolen maraca. The rattle of that piece of candy was the rolling thunder of my rapidly approaching fate. Every time he shook it my heart rate spiked. I wanted to scream at him to stop shaking that hat.

We stood there for what seemed like a half hour. I was hot, my face red, my heart the base drum to his maraca.

Thump THUMP shicka shickaaa
Thump THUMP shicka shickaaa

Finally a tall woman with blond hair walked up to us. This was it, the manager had arrived. The security guard explained my crime and showed her my tools as well as the item I tried to take. She looked down at me and asked me where my parents were.

Maybe I told the truth. Maybe I lied. Either way she let me off with a warning. I was embarrassed and relieved all in one fell swoop. As soon as she walked away and the security guard went back to his post, my dad and sister emerged from the back of the store.

Are you ready to go? he asked.

Yes, I said.

Very much so.

The Cutting Edge

2011-06-19T19:20:00.000-07:00

You look sharp.

That was my Dad’s favorite compliment to give me when I would get dressed up as a child. I’d be all snazzed up for a school function or a nice dinner and I’d say "How do I look?"

You look sharp.

It was the greatest compliment. I sounded razor edged, dangerous, chiseled to a fine point. I think I appreciate it even more now that I am in my late 20s and frequently feel like my life, and I myself, are out of focus.

 You look handsome.

That was my mom’s favorite thing to tell me. It’s a very mom type of compliment. The kind of thing you almost expect to hear from a mom but should be so lucky (as I have been) to hear it from your own. While it was usually my mother who dressed me, it was my father I sought to emulate.

I don’t know if other fathers compliment their sons the way my dad did. Maybe they tell them they look good? I really don’t know. But not only did my dad’s compliment to me feel unique, but also vintage, like a stylish bespoke blazer from another time dusted off and thrown over my shoulders.

My dad always looked sharp, at least when he was going to work. Now that he is semi-retired, his standards have relaxed slightly. But when he was going into the office every day, his tie would be perfect, his shoes would be shined, and his hair was always parted perfectly on the side.

You look sharp.

It’s an underrated compliment. One that I don’t think anybody else has ever given me. First my mother replicated his sharpness for me, and then when I was old enough to handle a comb, I did it myself. Hair parted on the side and secured with a heavy dose of hairspray. A four-in-hand knot pulled taught that fell just at the belt, even if it took me a half dozen tries.

He taught me to tuck my undershirt into my underwear to prevent it from shifting around. At the time and up until after college I thought this was the greatest idea ever. I do admit though, at a certain point I stopped tucking my undershirt into my underwear. I believe it was after catching myself in the mirror and realizing what minimal sex appeal I had was instantaneously negated by that move.

While my father has always looked good in professional scenarios or at social gatherings, his weekend attire has always been something else entirely. If his work wardrobe was his starting lineup, his weekend attire was like the collection of retired and handicapped players no longer capable of making it through a whole game.

Like the assortment of clothes he kept in the trunk of every car he ever had. It was a collection that we made fun of for being vaguely “vagabondesque” but which came in handy on more than a handful of occasions, specifically on chilly nights at the beach or outdoor concerts.

And then when I got my own car, I replicated his behavior with the clothes that I kept there myself.

As with most things in my life, anything I made fun of I eventually became.

Those clothes from his trunk were well loved. Soft flannel shirts from 20 years ago. A peach Pierre Cardin sweater that eventually made its way back into the house and then my closet, and then my number one choice to wear while lounging around the house in my boxers. The clothes in his trunk had seen some action. They all had a deconstructed feel that made you realize they couldn’t be worn anywhere you weren’t enjoying yourself. There softness told their story.

It’s funny that I almost have a greater affection for the things that came out of the trunk of his car. Those things had a badge of honor; they had been retired, honorably discharged.

But the clothes in his trunk didn’t see much action anymore. The clothes he wore to do chores around the house or run errands were the ones that received more use and much more ridiculing. We all made fun of him; my mother, my sister, and me.

Some things warranted it like the “Older, Wiser, Sexier” t-shirt he would wear to my little league games at a time in my life when I couldn’t even fathom the reason for the existence of such a shirt.

There were the cutoff shorts made from old jeans, the faded shorts, and the shorts with holes in comprising places that never seemed to bother him.

But he never cared, he was raking leaves, or mowing the lawn, or on the roof (always on the roof, what the hell does he do up there?) and just doing what he needed to do. His wardrobe was utilitarian in that regard. He was unflappable in that regard. He always has been.

But as I said, anything I made fun of I eventually became.

I caught my own reflection in the window of the bagel store on a Saturday morning not too long ago. Flip-flops, plaid shorts and a maroon sweatshirt with the hood pulled up. I had come full circle, or as my mother likes to say, “The turd doesn’t fall far from the bird.”

But even now that my father is in his 60s (a fact my mind can hardly comprehend) he still puts himself together, combs his hair, and tucks in his shirt (and maybe his undershirt, I have no idea). And he shaves nearly every day. Something else I have a hard time believing considering I only shave when it is absolutely necessary or a woman I keep company with threatens to leave me.

The former happens more than the latter.

I maintain that compliments are the hardest things in the world to accept. We chase them, we seek them, we prod for them, and yet when given to or heaped upon us, we dismiss them as though they are offensive. Oh no, oh stop; get out of here and the like.

The hardest thing in the world is to listen to somebody compliment you, look him or her in the eye, and then without a trace of dismissal or irony in your voice, maintain that eye contact and say thank you.

When my father would compliment me as a child I loved it. As a child you haven’t become self aware or insecure enough yet to engage in such foolishness as dismissing kind words somebody gives to you. When you look up to somebody as much as I have always looked up to my father, those words mean the world.

And that is why those words have stuck with me as long as they have. I’m well aware at this point in my life, the only reason my father was able to give me that compliment, the only reason anybody has ever been able to give me a compliment is because my father took what could have been a large pale mass of confusion and sharpened it.

He sharpened me.