Stinky, funny, sexy

Last night in improv class we played a Party Scene game in which one person is hosting a party and three guests arrive one at a time. The trick is that prior to starting the scene, each person designates in her own mind one scene-mate as stinky, one funny, and one sexy. Then in the scene each person's behavior must reflect how she feels about the other guests without actually saying it.

Right off the bat, I found myself in what the teacher later called a classic "Pepe Le Pew" scene where the person I had decided was Sexy had apparently decided I was Stinky.

Then, as I headed over to enjoy the delightful company of my Funny, she attached herself to her Funny and cut me out.

Finally, left with no one to interact with but my Stinky, I tried to make friendly conversation at a generous distance but she too quickly hurried away to "see about opening a window."

I guess some days you're just everybody's Stinky.

Fear and worry, part 2

Reading the NY Times online this morning I realized I had left one big thing off of my homemade info-graphic in yesterday's post.

Not knowing what to worry about and what to not worry about

The Times article generously offers "10 things to scratch from your worry list." The list includes things I would actually consider worrying about (cell-phone-induced brain cancer, for one) and fears that are a long way from making my list (notably, shark attacks and unmarked wormholes).

Recognizing that this article is clearly at least somewhat satirical, I couldn't help but get a little wound up by the discussion of the environmental impact of some everyday decisions: buying local vs long-haul food, paper vs plastic bags, car A/C vs open windows.

We are at a point where most people (at least most people I know) are concerned enough about "the environment" that they are willing to pause and consider making a more environmentally sound choice. The problem comes in knowing which choice that is.

It is rarely a straightforward question, and ultimately it ends up coming down to how you weigh tradeoffs against one another (eg, glass bottles are more recyclable than plastic ones but more greenhouse gas-intensive to transport).

And inevitably, just when we think we're being good, conscientious environmentalists using unbleached organic cloth napkins instead of paper towels, some jackass with a new analysis shows that the environmental impact of paper towels is actually lower because they biodegrade and tree farms absorb greenhouse gases and don't require irrigation, whereas organic cotton farms are water-intensive (and non-organic ones are hugely pest-and herbicide intensive) and washing & drying napkins uses water and energy and produces detergent and chemical runoff. You can't freaking win!

In light of all that, I think I will add one thing to the list of things that scare me: being an intolerably self-righteous and angry environmentalist.

We have nothing to fear but...

Barbie, you let us down.

Yay baseball!

We're taking advantage of living a block from the baseball stadium by going to games on evenings when you don't need arctic gear to survive more than a few innings. Last night was a perfect night for baseball so about 45 min into the game we wandered out our front door, scalped some $40 tickets for $10 each and headed into the land of $12 plastic bottles of Miller lite.

The game was fun but it quickly became clear that I wasn't going to leave happy without having gotten a foul ball, so I asked the universe to send one our way. I asked kinda quietly at first, but Eric said he didn't think the universe heard me - I had to shout it. So I did. (I guarantee you it was no more obnoxious or disruptive to the people around us than the women who were shouting an inane conversation behind us. "I was at this yoga class in Santa Monica and the guy from Six Feet Under walked in and I thought oh my god I can't believe this...")

So then I decided to take a picture:



As Eric was posing, we heard the crack of bat on ball and a guy behind us say "That's us!" And sure enough everyone around us was tracking the foul coming right at us, trying to position themselves to get it. Eric, typically quite agile, was unfortunately still posing for the photo and so did not dive for the ball with 8 other dudes, and as such did not get entangled in the ball of arms, legs and maybe even a few tails that grunted and bumped its way down the aisle until the guy with the sharpest teeth emerged victorious.

Thanks anyway universe!

I've failed!

Last night I went to my first improv class in San Francisco. There are 13 of us in class and it seems like a good group though I think at least one guy might be homeless. (If there were a place in the world where homeless people signed up to take improv classes, it would be San Francisco.)

About halfway through the three-hour class, the teacher stopped us abruptly in the middle of an exercise and directed us all to step one foot forward, throw our arms up overhead as though doing a circus performer's bow and loudly proclaim: "I've failed!"

We did this several times before she was satisfied.

You see, she explained, it is not that we are failures (except maybe for the homeless guy), but rather that good improv requires a level of risk-taking at which failure is inextricable from success; we embrace failure because that is how we know we are working at our creative edge.

I like how Keith Johnstone put it in our assigned reading:
"There are people who prefer to say 'Yes' and people who prefer to say 'No.' Those who say 'Yes' are rewarded by the adventures they have. Those who say 'No' are rewarded with the safety they attain."

I say Yes! I've failed! And I will fail again! Next week in improv class, if not sooner.

Part-time fire-eater

Did I mention that fire-eating lessons were part of the program in Canada?

Yes, this is really me.

No, I didn't realize my neck was so weird-looking either until now.

Eat me when I'm fatter

While I was in Canada, Eric fed himself by doing what we call "billy-goating" out of the fridge. This leads to classic meals like "cream cheese spread on flour tortillas and rolled up" or "cottage cheese mixed with salsa and scooped up with wheat thins." Suffice it to say one is not likely to find billy-goated meal menus on epicurious.com.

With billy goats on the brain this morning, I looked up the tale of the Three Billy Goats Gruff and learned that it is an "eat-me-when-I'm-fatter" tale. As the story goes, the billy goats have run out of food and gotten thin, and to get to the lush fields to get fat again they need to cross a troll-guarded bridge by outwitting the troll.

This raises the obvious question: could fridge trolls be the breakthrough we've been looking for to turn the tide on the childhood obesity epidemic in the US?

And I'd bet that with the educational system being what it is, the ability of American children to outwit trolls is probably pretty low.

Just saying.

Jiggity-jig

I'm home! What a week.

This is where I slept for the past week:

It rained all week but on the final evening we did get a peak of sun, and the only sunset of the week:

No one got voted off, and there was meat (moose!).

To the current list of definitions of "off-piste" I add one born of my experience this week:

c) Requiring significant quantities of deet in order to maintain a minimum level of blood in one's body and prevent the voracious Canadian mosquitoes from draining you dry.

It's great to be home.

Off to the great white north!

I leave this morning for Lake Temagami. It is in Canada, six hour drive north of Toronto. For a while I was telling people that I was going to northern Ontario until someone showed me a map of Canada.

I don't know what I will be doing there. It is a week-long workshop that is run by a facilitator I very much respect and it is billed as "an opportunity to laugh loudly and long – a chance to play while getting in touch with who you really are and who you want to become" but the exact agenda is, how you say, opaque.

This is what I do know:

• It is drug, alcohol and meat-free.


• We will be staying on an island in said lake.


• As far as I know, no one will be voted off.


• If it turns out that people are getting voted off you better believe I will be the last person standing, unless it sucks on the island and I would really rather come home early.


• Items on the packing list include a bathing suit and cotton nightgown for doing a "sweat lodge" and a regular-sized pouch of loose tobacco for "offerings." (I got "Bali Shag." Yup I did.)


• I will be driving up from Toronto with a seemingly lovely Canadian woman named Jane who wrote this to me in an email: "Getting excited about the week? I'm hearing that the bugs are particuarly bad so am off today to buy a bug jacket if I can."


• There is a high probability of being peer-pressured into awkward "native"-style dancing with the group at some point.


• Um, a bug jacket?

I come home on July 20th and I am not anticipating having any interweb access before that.

It is possible that the next time I post to this blog I will have a whole new understanding of what it really means to be "off-piste."

Grace Emily is an angel

I got to meet Grace Emily in person today and I can confidently report back that she is a remarkable little creature. I loved her immediately and I think the others present can confirm that I pretty much just stared at her the whole visit long. So little! So well-formed! Such long legs and feet! Yes, she is a most amazing baby.

I took a raft of photos but don't have my transfer cable with me so rather than disappoint I am shamelessly lifting a few photos from the ones Amanda and Dan have shared. I have never seen you guys so happy. :)



(I think the phrase you are looking for is "award-winning." Great pics!)

Best (2 day) layover ever.

Following a route off the marked track

off-piste (adj):

a) Following a route off the marked track

b) Of snow that has not been compacted by overuse; tends to be more exciting but less regulated and more dangerous

I've also learned since starting this blog that off-piste has fencing connotations. To anyone who has been reading this blog in anticipation of content related to fencing, I sincerely apologize. The fencing content is coming soon, I promise.

On the road

I'm in Chicago this evening on a long (2 day) layover en route to the great white north and got to have dinner with my father, step-mother Mykael and step-bros Alex and Justin tonight. Alex leaves Saturday for his first ever trip to Europe which triggered a barrage of nostalgia and unsolicited travel suggestions. My father remembered hitch-hiking through Germany ("when you didn't get a ride by nightfall, you would just walk a ways from the road into the fields and end up sleeping in a ditch or wherever you could find a good spot") and Mykael offered practical advice ("sometimes wine is cheaper than water") and a lot of mini-shampoos and conditioners. There was heated debate as to the appropriate number of pairs of socks to bring on a four-week trip. (I say three.)

At some point, my father wandered off down the hall. (It happens.) He came back with his passport pouch from 1972, complete with international student ID and a handful of now green Kenyan coins.



Wow, Dad! Check out that photo!

Have a great trip Alex!

When is a ____ not a _____?

I was having a hard time coming up with this old joke. It was on the tip of my tongue but I just wasn't getting it, and I knew that it was so obvious I would be embarrassed when I finally remembered it. Rather than asking a person for help, I asked the Google.

"When is a ____ not a _____?"*

Very often, as it turns out.

The one I had been trying to think of was: When is a door not a door? (When it is ajar)

But there were others working that same idea: When is a car not a car? (When it turns into a driveway)

And then, there was the bounty of the interweb spreading forth before me:

When is a crisp not a crisp? (When it is more like a cake or biscuit, according to Pringle attempting to get out of UK taxes that apply to the potato chip category but not other food categories)

When is a volunteer not a volunteer? (It isn't just about not getting paid)

When is a swastika not a swastika? (When it's encoded in unicode. Duh.)

When is a pegleg not a pegleg? (When you need a doctor's note to avoid having to check it on EasyJet.)

When Is a Tetrathiolate Not a Tetrathiolate (Um, yeah.)

To this list I add my own:

When is a house not a house? (When it is afire)

When is a boat not a boat? (When it is afloat)

When is a blog post no longer clever and entertaining? (OK. See you tomorrow.)

*In Google-speak, this is "When is a * not a *?".

Corn corn everywhere but not a kernel* to eat

On Eric's drive across our united states, he stopped in Yosemite and got us a very thoughtful housewarming gift: two mugs made entirely of...corn.

That's right: corn mugs. Have a look:


It's amazing what all corn is being used for these days. Consider just a few of the ways we are using corn other than as food for people:

• Adhesives
• Batteries
• Cosmetics
• Crayons and chalk
• Disposable Diapers
• Fuel ethanol
• Livestock feed (indirectly food for people, but only meat-eaters)
• Paper plates and cups
• Pharmaceuticals
• Rugs, Carpets
• Shaving creams and lotions
• Toothpaste
• Wallpaper

With corn now being used for everything from gas to makeup, and with corn supply threatened due to midwestern floods and other agricultural iffiness, the price of corn is expected to increase. Who knows what these corn mugs could end up being worth!

*Does this word look funny to anyone else?

Total eclipse of the heart

I got my AHA HeartSaver CPR certification this morning. Most gyms and yoga studios require instructors to have the certification and I guess I don't mind knowing the correct technique for how to potentially help save someone's life.

In the three hour class, we learned how to do CPR on adults, children and infants and how to help people of all ages when they are choking, including how to perform the Heimlich on adults who are either pregnant or "huge." It was hard not to feel silly as we pumped away at the chests of these head-and-torso mannequins and then tried to force air into their pursed little plastic lips through our personal vented plastic hygienic mouth shields, but that, plus $55, is a small price to pay to be whatever the opposite of a human weapon is.

These guys - all current or former paramedics - have clearly been doing this training for millenia, likely word for word as it was delivered today. For example, Steve shared this little gem on how to make sure you are doing the chest compressions at the right tempo:
"Lots of popular songs have a beat that is about 100 per minute. One of them is 'Another One Bites The Dust' but I'm not sure you want to be humming that while doing CPR." Ha! Gets 'em every time.

One weird thing: all of the adult CPR mannequins were white-skinned, but half of the infant mannequins were black-skinned and the other half were white-skinned. I'm pretty sure this was some sort of subliminal social commentary on the dramatically lower life expectancy of African Americans.

Yes, all in all it was a good morning. Cause hey, free dummy.

Going up?

I don't know if anyone else out there is concerned about the economy, but as a current job-seeker and overall economics enthusiast it seems to me that there are more than a few indicators that things are not, how you say, looking awesome.

In fact, I think it is only a matter of time before we are forced to start grappling with the challenges of inflation in all aspects of our lives. For instance, consider the prospect of inflation in the very wordstuff we use to communicate: language. Terrifying...or hilarious? For a deeper treatment of this topic, I give you a really old video clip of Danish pianist-comedian Victor Borge that I recently rediscovered and have since been looking for any pretext I can find or invent to pass along. (It's 5 min long but worth it!)

Enjoy!

That durned interweb!

After some reflection, I've determined that it would not be poor judgment to share the email I received from my mother following her introduction to my blog and her thwarted initial attempt to comment on it:

"Dude – you don't understand. You must explain to me. I have cut and pasted all this crap to show you how hard it is. The comment and word verification I can do. I will not be adding HMTL tags, thank you – isn't that what computers are supposed to do? But what the #$%#@ is meant by "Choose an Identity Google/Blogger or Open ID? I tried using both but couldn't make either work. And stop laughing, dammit, this isn't funny. I bet Sarah's parents couldn't do it either (and if they can, lie to me and tell me they couldn't). Like what the hell is Google/Blogger supposed to be? Dammit."

So, Gail, figured out how to comment yet...?

Rise and shine

Eric and I were woken from sound sleep this morning at 6:48am by the ear-mangling banshee shriek of the building fire alarm.

Milling with our neighbors in front of the building while we waited for the firefighters to show up, it was clear that we were not the only ones who we had zealously enjoyed celebrating our nation's birthday the evening before, though what our neighbors didn't know is that we had actually been celebrating Mexican independence, with margaritas, burritos and five kinds of salsa. (Viva Mexico!)

When the firemen (finally) turned up it was clear that they too had found our nation's birthday to be a compelling reason to get leathered.

I was looking over at a group of neighbors that had gathered, all with small dogs, wondering which was the one that yaps incessantly day and night as though asking to be killed, and when I turned back to Eric to comment that we seem to have unwittingly chosen to live in a small-dog-person building, I found him curled in a ball, contentedly sleeping on the street.

This alone might not have concerned me but for the fact that Eric has previously said to me - I am not making this up - that he is jealous of homeless people "because they get to have dogs."

Move over Baby Fishmouth. Welcome Baby Smoloto!

Exciting news today! Grace Emily, the baby formerly known as Baby Smoloto, has arrived. Welcome Grace Emily!! Congratulations to Amanda and Dan!!

No pictures were available at post time, but using technology previously only available to NASA, we were able to get a sneak peek at what Grace Emily will look like.

No reports yet on how Koufax and Baby Fishmouth are faring.

Opening night

Last night I taught my first public yoga class, for which I will be paid $35. It was at a local gym and I had a whopping 1 (one) person in the class: an older Indian woman who told me that she is "very much beginner level." When it became clear that it was going to be a private class for her I was momentarily tempted to offer to take her for an ice cream cone rather than doing the class, but thought better of it and instead asked her if she had any requests or anything in particular she wanted to work on. She just smiled and said she liked stretching. Sweet.

I have practiced teaching quite a bit, both with classmates in my training and also with a few very patient friends. The class I practice-taught on Monday evening, my last dress rehearsal, if you will, was probably my worst ever. I was calling for my lines, scene changes were slow and awkward, and the audience was clearly restless and crabby by the end (note to self: yoga right before dinner should always start with a pre-Om snack to maintain sufficient blood sugar). But I was optimistic about this first public class, remembering from my days in the theatre (read: junior high school) that when the last dress rehearsal is a total disaster you are almost guaranteed to have a flawless opening night.

Flawless it wasn't, but no one collapsed, cried or walked out. More than anything else, yoga is about breathing and that is pretty much what we did. She and I spent an hour breathing together and "stretching." It was great.

After the class I asked her what she thought and if she had any feedback for me. She smiled a lovely smile and thanked me for the class, saying it had been wonderful. She was so appreciative of the class I wanted to hug her. And though I was again tempted to offer to take her for ice cream, I just thanked her and said I would see her on Thursday for the next class.

Spare buttons

After a solid month of wearing nothing but comfy stretchy clothing for my yoga teacher training, I got dressed in "real" clothing today to go into an office place to meet a friend for lunch. The professional-looking pants I put on have a spare button sewn on the inside and on noticing it I paused in thoughtful appreciation: should I ever lose one of the buttons (burrito-provoked or otherwise), I feel reasonably sure I will be able to locate the replacement. In contrast, the button and extra thread orphanage I've got going at home is not likely to ever be the source of the spare button that I actually need. This little design detail got me thinking:

What other items would it benefit me to have attached to my physical person or clothing?

I could start small, maybe pinning a few safety pins inside every pair of pants just in case.

And this winter I might bring back the classic mittens-on-the-end-of-my-coatsleeves.

And what about discretely affixing a few bandaids to the underside of the sole of a heel where it doesn't touch the ground?

There are already some product designers out there thinking like this. Cheers to Reef, who has made some important progress in this area by putting flasks in the soles of flip flops. Yet the Swiss have let us down: where is the Swiss Army hair clip, complete with corkscrew?

Surely I am not the first person to have thought of this.