FOX + Kids and Comedians (and a shameless plug)

Happy Friday!

A few videos and a bit of video related news for you this morning…

I am going to be returning to Good Day Sacramento tomorrow morning at 8 am. You should be able to watch it live on their website… and I will hopefully get it linked up here later this weekend.

But to tide you over until you can watch me talk with my hands and try to avoid saying “ummm” 12 times in three minutes, here are a few videos!


First off, my continuing crush on Jon Stewart as he does a Gln Beck impersonation to beat the band.

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart	Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c
The 11/3 Project
www.thedailyshow.com
Daily Show Full Episodes Political Humor Health Care Crisis

Next, What happens when you mix well meaning but out of touch ad people with pop culture. Burger King has had some very creepy commercials in its time (Waking Up With The King” being pretty high on that list), but this one just takes the cake.






And lastly… let’s put together our motife of making fun of Fox News an wonky children’s pop culture…. That’s right, you guessed it: Sesame Street.

Not only is the famous street turning 40 this week (wow!) but they made it into the news for allergy overstepping the bounds in relation to, you guessed it, Fox News.

In the October 29th episode, Oscar the Grouch — the founder of the Grouch News Network (GNN) — receives a phone call from what appears to be a female muppet complaining that GNN isn’t grouchy enough.

“I am changing the channel,” she says to Oscar. “From now on I am watching ‘Pox’ News. Now there is a trashy news show.”

Apparently POX News is too close to FOX News for the comfort level of FOX News.

What do you think?






Ok all… that’s it for me for now… enjoy your weekend and don’t forget to click on over to Good Day Sacramento for my TV spot!

Sometimes....

I recently changed jobs. My new role is within an organization that is vastly different than my former employer. Instead of working in the world of finance and HR, I now work in the world of Non Profit and Volunteering.

From LSI (internal device and data storage) I now work for Big Brothers Big Sisters (after school programs and one on one mentoring).

It is quite a switch.

I really love my new job. BBBS does mentoring programs for kids. We match a Big with a Little to provide a positive role model. It is a lot of fun and I am learning a lot. One of the things I like most about this job is knowing that I am having a positive impact on the children and youth of my newly adopted county.

I have gotten to play with little kids, help out at a Halloween party, interact with medium aged children, and really see the difference that our organization can make.

There was a moment recently….

On the intake forms they ask the children a series of questions. Fill in the blank sorts of things like “When I am sad I….” and “My favorite thing to do on the weekends is….”

The last question on the list is “Sometimes people are…”

The number one response, the response that overshadows all others, is heart wrenching.

“Sometimes people are… mean.”

I am so glad that I am part of the solution for these kids. Because sometimes, sometimes it is paramount to strive to make a difference.

Sometimes people are worth it.



(This post wasn’t a pitch for donations… but if you are interested in learning more about what BBBS does, let me know.)

Happy Nerd Appreciation Day (not really)

I love nerds.
And geeks.
And all odd balls.

So, in honor of all that and the fact that it is Thursday....

... and that the internet turns 40 today.




NASA + Felicia Day = Nifty Nerdy Fun.





Bible Study + Buffy and Humor = More Nifty Nerdy Fun




Branding your kid a nerd before he/she can even walk….





.. well… that’s just cruel.



Happy Thursday!

An Adventure in Getting Dressed

Ok.. so,

Jeans: Jeans are easy. They zip in the front. It matters not if you are a guy or a girl or where the tag is. Sometimes the tag is in the back, sometimes next to the zipper… but who cares? They zip in the front.



Skirts: Skirts are a bit harder. They can zip on the side or the back. The tag can be on the side next to the zipper or in the back… or not there at all. Usually it is obvious based on the lines and the structure of the skirt if it is a side zip or a back zip. Usually.




Women’s Dress Pants: Ok, here’s where it gets tricky. The tag is next to the zipper.. the zipper… is in the front.. right? Wait… sometimes it looks like the zipper goes in the back (like a skirt) because there is a subtle difference in the amount of fabric in the front/back. Sometimes thought the difference in the fabric isn’t there… and then I have to wonder.. back like a skirt, or front like men’s pants and jeans?




And of course unlike in the photo, with the particular pair of pants I was dealing with this morning, there aren’t any pockets to give guidance.

It is moments like these… where I have put on the pants, taken them off, put them on again…. (this was after the 10 minutes trying to manage thigh high nylons and deciding that the weird little roll that happens would be too distracting at work and under pants) … it is in these moments that I doubt that I am all grown up.

Because… because despite the fact that I have an adult job doing adult things, that I pay rent and clean the cat pot and balance my checkbook and have written a book and have exciting travel pans…

…sometimes I still feel very young.

It Isn't Paranoia If It's Real

The shredder stopped working today. It took one sheet and then another and then another and then nothing. It has been unplugged, replugged, shaken, cleaned, shaken, cleaned, moved, and everything else I can think to do… and yet. No shredding.

Next, the copy machine got all persnickety and didn’t want to copy anything until a mysterious “feed error” was taken care of. I gave it a time out, turned it on and off a few times, opened up every conceivable door and cranny, Eventually it changed its mind and allowed me to make a few copies.

Fresh off that victory I returned to the shredder. But no dice.

Then the fax machine decided that despite all evidence to the contrary, the over was open. “Close Cover” it kept telling me. I replied with “The damn cover is already closed you stupid heap of plastic,” but in vain. So I opened the cover, closed the cover, opened the feed tray, closed the feed tray… over and over again. The infernal machine kept insisting that I needed to “Close Cover” and I kept insisting that it was already closed…. Until at last it managed to clue in, and allow me to start typing in a phone number. Half way through the faxing process, it… and I swear it snickered as it did it, suddenly stopped and declared that the cover was yet again, open.

I wanted to cry.

Or break something plastic and beepy.

Instead I took a breath, and tried again.

Eventually the faxes were sent and received.

The shredder, on the other hand, is committed to making me look silly and has shown no interest in cooperating in the slightest.



Oh the joy of office work.

I'm ready for lunch.

25 is the new 50

According to this lady, women in Scotland should follow the trends of the oh so fashionable and enviable women in London and start getting Botox in their mid 20s.

First thing, is this an actual trend? Are women in their mid 20s getting injections as a way to make their faces firmer and younger looking? How crappy would your face have to look at 25 for you to consider Botox? How low would your self esteem have to be?

Second thing: Ew!

It’s bad enough that the media likes to celebrate youth with the sort of hyper drool fest that I celebrate fresh baked cookies or Jon Stewart. (It’s loud, it’s messy, it’s not for everyone.)

Ahem

My point is that our fascination with youth is not just gross (cookie crumbs flying everywhere) but also dangerous.

When a Ralph Lauren model gets fired for being too fat (oh my god, size 4… what a cow!) and people start thinking that women in their mid 20s need Botox, we have some serious issues on our hands and faces and asses.

Issues that can really only be solved with education, experience, and positive role models.

This horse isn’t dead… I will keep hitting it.

Join me... let's celebrate laugh lines, wisdom wrinkles, and the fact that we have waists bigger than our heads.

Hippies and Band Uniforms

I should have slept in Scotts Valley last night.

This morning around 6 am they were out cleaning the streets. Namely, my street. There were tow trucks, there were street sweeper trucks, there were trash trucks…. Basically for about 45 minutes there was a parade of loud beeping trucks with flashing lights right outside my bedroom window.

Then at 7, the bands began to arrive. I am not sure how many there are total, but it is now 1145 and they are still coming… rows upon rows of high school marching bands. This part of SC is apparently the staging area for some big competition.

Yes, high school marching bands.

With the whistles and the drums and the yelling and the annoying sidelined parents and the costumes and the general high school-ness of it all. And the whistles. And the drums.

Outside my windows.

The cat is in a mild permanent state of frantic freak out and I keep finding excuses to leave the apartment. I took clothes over to Good Will to donate. I took a box of books to sell to Logos. (What they don’t want, I’ll donate to the library.) I went to the post office and mailed a copy of my book to John S. (winner of the drawing). Really though, I need to be home cleaning, writing, reading, watching Supernatural, and such and it is hard to do that with the incredibly loud bands out there.

Anyway, on my walk back from the post office I ended up walking behind a woman with her two little girls (around age 5). The little girls were pretty cute; one was carrying a big water bottle, the other a rolled up newspaper. As they neared the corner, the newspaper girl veered away from her mother and stopped in the shade of a shop’s awning. She put the newspaper down on the sidewalk and then hurried to catch up with her mom and sister.

“I don’t want it.” She informed her mother.
“Oh, ok, glad we bothered to carry it around all morning.” Her mother replied.

“Hey!” This from me, the unnoticed interloper, “Excuse me!”

The mother turns around. I continue; “Are you just going to let her leave that there on the ground?”

The mother shrugs and turns away.

“Hey!! That’s littering!” Me again, my voice getting louder because I have stoped next to the offending newspaper and they have continued on. “There’s a trash can right over there! Excuse me!”

The mother turns back, the little girls are slowing downa dn looking behind at me, eyes wide. “Stop yelling at my kids! If you care that much, pick it up yourself!”

She grabs the hands of both girls and the one with the water bottle starts to cry as she is pulled roughly down the street.

“Mommy, owww… why is that lady mad/”

“Ignore her.” says the mother, “She’s just a dirty hippy. Come on!”

Dirty hippy my ass, I should have thrown it at her head. Ii didn’t.
I did and pick it up and throw it away. Not because I am a hippy, dirty or otherwise, but because I am a local and I am a decent sort of person.

Then I finished the walk back to my apartment to try to enjoy the starts and stops of random marching songs and comfort my cat.

Ahhh life in a small, beach, college, tourist town….

Starts And Stops

It starts like this.....

It was the autumnal equinox and even though she was a level headed girl, who considered herself beyond the allure of casual superstitions, she found herself blaming the calendar, or perhaps the day to night ratio, for what happened. Of course, blame came later. On the day in question, she was only vaguely aware that it was the beginning of fall. The sun, after all was out and the day was exceptionally nice and warm.
(A Baker’s Dozen)


I am really good at beginnings. I am actually really good at middles and pretty darn good at endings.

You know what I am not so good about? Finishing.

How is that different from the ending? Well, usually when I start a short story or an idea for a novel there is a vast amount of Unknown. And this Unknown is exciting.

We went back to her place because it was closer and because I was legitimately interested in seeing her art. Sleeping with her, sure, but art was what had brought me out to the gallery opening on such a rainy night in the first place and art had been the focus of our conversation for at least an hour before it dawned on me that she might be interested in more than just my ranting about the importance of oil paints as an aesthetic choice. Her overzealous and almost painful exuberance in the cab ride had not only embarrassed the driver but had also made her intentions obvious.
(Surface Dweller)


Sometimes I start with a word, a phrase, a vague ideas…. And I just write. I write and the words come out and the story takes shape. I don’t know how it is going to end. That not knowing keeps me interested in writing. I am on a journey and the only way to find out what happens next is to keep typing.

We came back to the house because I didn’t know where else to go. In the entry hall, I put my purse down on the table and then looked at it as if it were a strange foreign object. I took my shoes off and left them half hidden under the hall table. I went to the living room on autopilot and sat down on the sofa. I waited to feel something else.
Martin was a study of slow movements, taking off his sports coat, checking the thermostat, moving the mail from one pile to another, checking the messages. I sat still, not wanting to move. I had thought that getting through the funeral would be the hardest part, but this sitting here afterwards with nothing to do, nothing to plan or organize, nothing to take care of, this was worse.
(Dead Line)


Sometimes I start with a character. A person sometimes only partly formed, sometimes so severely detailed that they are more real than the people sitting next to me. This character has a story, an event, a moment of clarity but I don’t know what it is. All I know is that I have to write about him/her or they will haunt me. Ben is such a character. He has been haunting me for almost a year.

The ball had dropped hours ago. The streets that had been overflowing with merry makers had dissolved into dark alleys where trash danced in the flickering traffic lights. It was hard for Ben to imagine that there had been hundreds people here just a few hours ago, and that all of them had been happy. Or at least they had pretended to be happy. Ben supposed you shouldn’t go to a New Year’s party and act depressed, even if you were. Depressed people were supposed to stay in cheap hotel rooms and drink cheap whisky and sulk. If you bothered to get dressed up and hit the streets, then you better at least act happy for the sake of the actual happy people out there who don’t want to get dragged down by your low mood.
(Becoming)


Really though, whether it is the person, the event, or just an errant line….


I am nothing but a drop of water in transition.
(Night Scape)

…I have to write the rest of the story in order to find out the rest, the pulse, the reason, the message, the moral, the ending.

And as a process it works. Sometimes it works really really well. There have been times when I have written a solid story straight through. All 2000 words or whatever it is… just barreling though not sure what is going to happen, like my future readers, I am along for the ride.

Sometimes though, I get interrupted. I do other things besides write and thus if an idea comes while on a bus or working on a spreadsheet or standing over a pot of boiling pasta, I either can’t start it or at the very least I can’t finish it. At least not right that second.

This is where the problem comes in. The problem of Finishing. It isn’t a matter of not being able to come up with an ending. If I write it in one fell swoop the ending is part of the initial birthing process.

But if I take a break, if I step away, if I SAVE and return to it later…. Then I have time to think.

I think about what might happen. I think about what should happen. I think about what would make sense. And then I write an ending.


When I get home hours later Marty is sitting in the living room, a book on his lap. He looks at me while I take my time locking the door and putting my bag carefully on the end table. I know he knows I came home and then left, I know he wants to know why and where and what it all means. For the first time in months I look at him and see the tiny worry lines around his eyes, the flicker of fear as he looks back.
I cross the room and sit down beside him. For a long moment I hold his gaze with my own and then I kiss him. There are things to do, calls to make, the final edits for the story will have to be hammered out and argued over. The magazine people will have to be coddled and I will probably end up loosing my commission on the story because it is so far past deadline. And Marty.. there will have to be talking with Marty as well. Actual talking, actual communication.
I tell myself I will deal with all that tomorrow. Right now, I kiss him and feel the walls come down.
(Dead Line)


The problem is that once I know how it is going to end because I have spent an hour, a day, a lunch break, a bus ride, a trip to the store, thinking about it… I really lack the drive to put it down on paper.

It’s the same thing that if you know how the movie ends, you are less likly to watch it. You might still watch it, you might still enjoy it. You might even find something surprising about it. But the fact remains that you might just skip it to see something else, something with a Unknown ending.

Which leaves me with dozens if not hundreds of MS Word documents that I just can’t bring myself to finish. Because I already know how they end.

And because I just got a new idea… a new moment of inspiration… and I simply must write it down…..

She awoke and for a long moment she was confused. The room was dark, deeply dark, middle of the night in the middle of winter dark and there was no reason for her to be awake. She had never suffered from sleeplessness and even with the current stresses and upcoming life style changes she had been sleeping just fine thank you very much. Her mother worried that she wasn’t ready, but Anna argued that her ability to sleep like a baby every night obviously pointed to her overall acceptance of the inevitable. Of course when she said things like that her mother rolled her eyes and muttered to herself in Yiddish and usually went to pour herself a drink.
And yet she was suddenly awake and staring at the ceiling. Why, she wondered, why am I awake? What woke me up? Was she finally going to start worrying and second guessing her decision now that it was almost too late to do anything about it? Was she about to go through some sort of crisis of faith? Would her sister arrive home tomorrow to find her shaken and tense, gulping coffee, stammering incoherently, her face pale, her breath reeking of cigarettes?
(One Night)

Here we go again.

I keep myself I’ll go back and finish them if I can forget my plans, if I can tap into once again the freedom of the Unknown.

Sometimes that forced forgetting actually works.

(A few of the excerpts in this blog entry actually made it, in short story form, into my book Links: A Short Story Collection which is available on Amazon.com)