You Must Present
I like this image. No disrespect to Pankaj Ghemawat or the Eight Percent is intended.
These days, if you decide to come after Twitter, you had best bring your A-game. You gotta have cred. Because, when the shit hits the fan, you have a grand total of .42 seconds to capture the attention of that potential follower or lose ’em forever.
You get one chance. One!!
Strike while the iron is hot. Seize the day. Squeeze lemonade out of their lemons. Losers always whine about their best. Winners go home and fuck the prom queen.
That’s where I come in. My latest business idea will give you insta-playa status. Make the jump for our special presentation or choose the path that leads to dying alone.
New Year Resolutions
Did I mention I made some resolutions? Oops. I guess we can take “avoid being trendy” off the list.
Be that as it may, I thought I’d share. And here, in writing, is my bold claim: I literally guarantee I will make at least one of these come true. You can take that to the bank. Which one? Only time can tell.
- Publish a novel
- Watch every episode of Downton Abbey
- CrossFit every day
- Acquire one dozen “iMac with 5k Retina Display” and run them in parallel to update my blog
- Be honored as Volunteer of the Year
- Perform the song Uptown Funk on American Idol
- High dive into the Ik Kil Yucatán cenote
- Eat a donut
I’ll report back when I’ve accomplished one of these.
I Do Jurassic
This month my wife and I will celebrate our 10th wedding anniversary. (She registered us at Home Depot if anyone is interested.)
Ten glorious years. How to properly signify such an event? I, for one, want to renew our wedding vows. Because, have you seen the Jurassic Park wedding photo craze going around?
It works like this:
First, get Jeff Goldblum to attend your function. Next, pick an expansive outdoor location that will make a good backdrop for your photographic for your marital hijinks. Prepare your guests so that when the photographer says, “Say cheese!” that’s their cue to act like idiots. Last, but not least, photoshop something into the background like a T-Rex or Olivia Wilde feeding her baby.
Viola! Say adios to traditional boring ceremony and hola to hilarious social virality.
For sprinkles on top I’m going to mix in some twerking, planking and, my personal favorite, on ongoing web-series where I recreate iconic photos from history like Marilyn Monroe getting her dress blown up. (These shots will be worth the wait. I promise.) We’ll also do lots of shots of people jumping in the air with brooms and looking like idiots from Harry Potter.
Now that I think about it, I don’t know if any record of our original vows exist. I remember the wife wrote some for her. I have these memories that I was supposed to do something similar. I totally remember her going on and on about it. And, I’m pretty sure I treated the event like a poetry slam and improvised some pretty impressive shit. True, we no longer have an exact record but I’m pretty sure it liberally featured things like “I love you” and “you are beautiful” and “I’m sorry.” Really good stuff.
The point here is that you have to make your wedding fun and memorable and viral for people other than yourselves. That reminds me: All wedding guests will have to grow beards and wear fedoras.
Or maybe we could forget all that, go green screen, and get J. J. Abrams to shake a camera and add lens flares?
This is going to be so cool! Truly the event of the season.
We’ll simulcast a live video feed of the event along with microblogs on Twitter. Sure my iPad will be in every shot but it’ll be worth it.
I almost feel like I’m forgetting something. Oh yeah! Who’s my wife again? Because, it’s all about the special love between two people. Yeah, right!
Keepin’ It Reality Yo
I wanna know what you’re thinking.
As a person that constitutes a form of life (or so I assume) there are two realities that I’m reasonably sure exist:
- My own (that I’m fairly familiar with)
- All that other shits
Note: If you get lumped in with the latter group please don’t take it personally. I don’t make the rules.
Even with the stark duality of this view, however, I imagine certain explorations into that other realm where y’all live are still possible.
For example, using inference, deduction and other external stimuli, I can attempt to discern what’s going on in that gray matter you recklessly call a brain. Clues might include things like your primitive vocalizations, ritualistic dance and other movements, and how you are adorned.
That plumage on your head in the form of a fedora speaks volumes. I interpret that as a rather pronounced attempt to establish position within your group. Am I right? Judging actual intent of other life forms can be tricky. It’s always murky guesswork. But I’m pretty sure I nailed it.
I mentioned to my wife the other day that I would deliberately do the opposite of what I really wanted if I perceived that it might be perceived by other people as an attempt to be cool. Think about it. That’s a very deep thought. I’d literally do the exact opposite of what I want, which, by definition, is that which I hate.
I’m committed. And now, a brief case study.
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Searching the dark recesses
The internet is pretty good at having information but not always so good at the sharing of it.
“Did you see that video? Thing You Did With A Banana? It was so funny!”
Nope. Never heard of it. Now I feel more left out and more like an outlier than ever before. Well played, internet.
You know what’s not well played? The video itself.
There I was, in my own living room, feeling all dejected because when it came to Thing You Did With A Banana I didn’t even qualify for a participant ribbon. Not only had I never seen it. I’d never even heard of it. Since this is how I measure my worth as a human being I was feeling sad and dejected.
Luckily we recently souped up our home entertainment system with a device that has YouTube built in. I decided to undertake a quest. I was going on a mission to search and destroy.
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Space-Time Ice-Creamium
Recently, after some Lebonese dinner across town, my wife said, “There’s an ice cream place only two blocks away. Let’s go!”
I was already full. Case in point: She was toting a box of leftovers but I was not. Mine had been crammed down my gullet. This scenario would soon allow me to put my advanced decision-making skills on display.
We walked into the shop and it was what I like to describe as “Portland cute.” The place was constructed to look post-industrial. This means concrete walls, vaulted ceilings with lots of duct work, lighting fixtures that hang all the way down from the ceiling and, of course, the pièce de résistance of the Portland eatery scene: the fake garage door. Those things are ubiquitous around here, perhaps even on par with the fedora and other trendy chapeaux.
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Micro
I still wake up sometimes. I wake up in the dark and hear the screaming of the micro-lettuce.
Yes, for those counting, that’s two references to the same movie in the last three posts. I cut like a micro-ginsu!
If you’re not micro-plating yet you should be. Micro-utensils down!
If you like small things, that hopefully bodes well for me and this post.
Today I’m here to brag about my new restaurant and cutting edge (heh) logo design. Yeah, I made that.
Introducing MICRO. It’s flavor deconstructed but mostly shrunk. And, contrary to popular belief, we don’t offer reductions. Some things go too far.
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Shouts from the Abyss 
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