Phones Work Two Ways

I move about. I am always the one away from home base. Is it therefore solely my duty to call home? to call my friends? To call my family? Is it I who must bear the duty of keeping in touch? No freaking way people. Phones go both ways - they can both make and receive calls. Sure, I'm busier than most and my work schedule is a little non-typical, but you know what, if you call me and I'm in the middle of something, the worst that could happen is that I don't answer. At that point, you can leave a message saying you tried to reach me and hopefully we'll catch each other sooner rather than later. I will see this voicemail, listen to it, and call you back, as my voicemail says, at my earliest convenience.

If you don't call me ever, don't tell me when we finally do speak that it's been so long and we need to do a better job at keeping in touch. I am doing a job at keeping in touch. I have to make a zillion calls home all the freaking time cause everyone just sends me stupid Facebook posts that say things like, "you've disappeared. We miss you" or "are you alive. Call if you are". Yes, I'm freaking alive. I should hope that you would have had the decensy to call me if you truly thought I was dying. Although, if we're sticking to how things have been, I suppose it would be my duty to inform those back home that "I am on my way out of this earthly world. Please call if you have a sec. I'd love to hear from you". I suppose that would lead to a pretty quiet death though.

Perhaps this post has been a bit melodramatic, but for the love of chocolate people, if the reason you aren't calling is because you don't have the long-dstance minutes, just call and ask me to call you right back; there's no harm in that. I miss all of you too, but we could be missing each other less.

A Review of $#*! My Dad Says (for some reason)

I think I liked it. I watched it to see what the hype was about. I watched it so I could partake in a possible office conversation the following morning. I watched it expecting to see Shatner flounder, to see forced diatribe from a fake, grumpy old man. I also watched hoping to see that they were able to create something worth watching. It’s a rather ambitious task to create a successful series based on roughly 200 quotes, each 140 characters or less.

I’d say that over the 22 minutes of comedy, I laughed audibly five times. Three were with some force behind them – they were breath ejected with forceful surprise to the pleasantly unexpected. The other two were moderately delayed chuckles as I put the scene together, took into account what we knew about the characters, where the dialogue was going, and what I expected to see happen but quickly realized instead, “hey, that was pretty funny. I liked that”.

I’m all for giving things time. To use once again, an overly used metaphor, comedy is like a nice red wine – it needs to breath. Like the wine, whose tannins need to mix with the oxygen in the air, the characters in a comedy need to develop, the plot lines need to form, and the two need to meet, mix and combine in a way that creates a unified entity. I’m not saying every show on the air would be a success if given time, but there are a few that deserve that ability. Could you imagine if we had to base all life’s relationships from a 22 minute meet-and-greet? What are the odds that in that time you would learn that both you and this relative stranger were in the Greek islands at the exact same time, that you stayed at hotels just down the street, and that you both had a super awkward exchange with that guy outside that one restaurant with the teal awning. You wouldn’t. These are things that you learn in time. Things that make the person all that much more interesting.

So there you have it, let’s watch to see whether the strained yet loving relationship between Shatner and his kid proves endearing or repetitively annoying. Let’s watch to see if the ‘grizzled old dad’ and ‘bumbling young adult’ dynamic is a sustainable one or if the “you’re stuck in your ways old man…yeah, well you have no direction in life, kid” jokes wear thin. Let’s watch to see.

And they Call Earth a Neutral Planet?

Volcanoes...


Lightning storms...


Tornadoes...


Sandstorms...


Earthquakes...


Floods...


The ocean...



...Alls I'm just saying is, we should really thank our lucky stars when we wake up each morning.

Moden "Art", Modern Art?, Fine, Modern Art

Note: The following is best read with a lit cigarette in hand, arm bent at the elbow, head tilted away from the cigarette and up to the sky with the other hand on hip. Dialect should be that of a high-brow, holier-than-thou sophisticate.

I have a fabulous idea. It struck me whilst I was sitting in an egg chair in my downtown loft watching black and white silent films at 3:30 in the morning wearing nothing but a silk vest and wool socks. I must rush out to collect the components of this brilliant idea. I shall be famous. They shall write of me in history books. People shall flock to view my work and when they arrive its beauty will render them speechless. The complexity of the design and the multitude of emotions and themes will penetrate their conscious till they simply can not understand what it is they are viewing. They will stare and stare and hope that a pin prick of a shred of familiarity will bring them to a definable place where they no longer feel cold and alone and uncertain. They will hear laughter and be pulled in. They will contort their faces and move about to get a better look, a different angle, a more clear position with which to absorb the depth of ingenuity of this piece, nay, this installation, this feat, this triumph of creativity. I am an artist.

Modern Art. Humans are weird.