Category: Awesome Things

Straight up now tell me: What was your first CD?

Mine was “Forever Your Girl” by Paula Abdul which was gift-wrapped together with Janet Jackson’s “Rhythm Nation” as part of a Christmas present with my new mini-system. Yes, I was ten years old when the boxy Magnasonic arrived under the tree… and I can still remember those CDs vividly. Of course, that’s probably because we went through the four steps of New Record, Tape, or CD Love together:

Step 1: Plenty of fish. Checking posters at the record store, flipping through Columbia House catalogues, flipping through hundreds of plastic-tombed tapes, you’re single and looking for love. Maybe they had a listening booth but most likely you plucked your album based on a song or two from the radio … and the rest was a complete surprise.

Stage 2: The First Time. This is the sweetest stage. All alone in your room you have a quiet moment with your new disc. When you get frustrated with the shrinkwrap you start biting it till it eventually peels off and static-clings to your hand. Next you push the case open, hear the little squeaky crunch as you pull it out of the case, and then gaze at that mirrory scratchless rainbow purity. Quickly peel out the booklet to see what kind of artwork they included and whether the put the lyrics in. Then you put it into the player, hear it spin round, and hold your breath and push play…

Stage 3: Dating Steady. You can’t live without each other. You pop the tape into your Walkman and listen to both sides, both ways, every day. You stick the CD in your car stereo and jam to it every night on your way home. You start memorizing the lyrics, your brain starts hearing the next song after the last one ends, and you start telling everyone about the album…. This is also the stage when you rearrange your life around your new tape or CD. This means taking every other CD out of your dusty tower by your TV and reorder them all alphabetically.

Stage 4: Lost love. It’s not that the love didn’t last. It’s just that your heart moved on and your record or tape didn’t change. You dyed your hair and went punk, fell in love with someone into hip-hop, or maybe got strung out on Top 40 during your blurry Clubland days. Now your first CD or tape sits lonely at the bottom of a shoebox, garage sale pile, or closet. You stumble upon it again and pop it in for a listen down memory lane… with your brain still hearing the next song after the last one ends, the lyrics shooting back to you, and all the memories from that distant time in your life flashing through your brain. You can see the bedspread you sat on listening… see the posters on your wall… and hear your mom calling your for dinner…

Your first album calls back a day when records, tapes, and CDs meant something more. They weren’t just plastic rectangles in paper boxes… they were little keys to your thoughts, doors to your heart, and friends when you were lonely. Lyrics colored in your own feelings, choruses sent you flying away, twisted jams twisted your head around, and every part of it made you today….

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

What was your worst job ever?

Yes, we were chatting about bad jobs the other night and I said unclogging grease traps with my bare hands was at the top of my list. Pulling out that rusty Black Box of Death from under the triple-sink released a foul Rotting Meat Scraps From Six Months Ago stench that was seared forever in my brain.

Scott said his gig was worse: scraping out urinals at the bar he worked at in high school. Being the low man on the grill meant whenever someone created a horrible mess he was thrown a handful of paper towels and told to get to it.

We all thought Scott might have won the title but our friend Tyler said collecting shopping carts in the grocery store lot was worse. “Think about it,” he started. “There’s that constant search for lost carts, snapping them all into mate-mode, and then pushing the world’s heaviest Shopping Cart Train back inside without hitting anything. Rain, slush, snow, it doesn’t matter, you just freeze for hours and hours all by yourself.”

We sent Tyler’s argument to the Bad Job Jury for deliberation and it eventually got ruled out. Why? The jury argued that Cart-Picker-Upper Guy gets fresh air, good exercise, and the added bonus of laughing out loud whenever he sees big dogs sitting in the driver’s seat of a parked car.

Yes, he gets to imagine that dog trying to figure out how to drive in case some killer disease wipes out the entire human population while his owner grabs milk and bananas. “It’s up to dogs now,” you can hear him thinking, gamely pawing the slippery steering wheel, staring at you with sad tired eyes. “Don’t just look at me… where’s the stupid emergency brake?”

Seeing a big dog sitting in the driver’s eat of a parked car is a loving sight — ranking with sunrises over glittery oceans, old people holding hands, and kaleidoscoping blue-green lights at the edges of the horizon. That’s because big dogs in driver’s seats are the car equivalent of a Friendly Pet Welcome at the front door. Except you can actually see the welcome about to happen through the glass.

So I say whether it’s pushing carts through snow and seeing adorable big dog faces, mopping dusty school hallways and catching little kid embraces, or spilling coffee in turbulence just to land in sandy new places — what we’re saying today is that every tough job has its silver linings, quiet pleasures, and hidden little sighting of

AWESOME!

Photos from: here, here, and here

Get clickin’.

There are three big ways the deed goes down:

1. The Non-Stopper. You’re mindless fiddling with a pen when you notice it’s got a great spring… so you start clicking it over and over again. Your brain gets into a rhythm with the sound so you click faster and faster and faster and faster until your thumb slips or you break the thing.

2. Mission to Mars. Here’s where you turn the pen upside down, push it into the table, close your eyes, and rocket launch it across the room. Make sure you look away casually so nobody fingers you in the police lineup later. Special points if your pen lands perfectly in your French teacher’s bun.

3. Part of the band. I love it when random noises star as percussion sections in impromptu jams in your Brain Garage Maybe it’s the guitar slide noise you get from your seatbelt while drumming on the car dashboard. Maybe it your windshield wipers adding rhythm to your car stereo. Or maybe it’s the clicking pen at the back of class while tapping your textbook and stomping your sneakers.

Twisting bubble wrap till it machine gun pops, cracking thinly frozen puddles, and pushing those little buttons on soft drink cup lids all scratch the same strange itch in our brains as clicking pens with really strong springs.

Do not question the

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

AWESOME!

Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet

Head Factory is a busy place.

Seeing, swallowing, smelling, hearing, thinking, breathing — yes, it’s a 24/7 triple-shift work-around-the-clock type of place. And the foreman of Head Factory doesn’t care if you’re sleeping, working, or daydreaming, either. He’s got a job to do and you’re going to breathe, smell, and hear whether you want to or not.

Of course, with so much going on it’s no wonder the gears in Head Factory clunk up now and then. Dense throbbing in the back of your neck, piercing temples, or dull aches behind your eyes are all signs the factory is steaming and too much overtime has the gang threatening to strike.

Yes, factory problems slow us down and we reach for water, pills, and damp cloths. Sometimes sharp smells, loud noises, or too much moving makes things worse so you banish yourself to the Quiet Dark Room to work things out. Of course, when you get there you just lie uncomfortably wide awake on a hot pillow thinking of nothing other than the terrible piercing in your skull and counting the minutes in agony …

But that’s what makes it so great when you realize your headache is just suddenly … gone. It disappeared! Did it disappear? You wait for a minute and let your brain tiptoe slowly around your skull a little bit. “Is it really gone?” you ask yourself, waiting a couple minutes, not wanting to get your hopes up.

But over those minutes your thoughts clear up, striking workers stream in, and everything starts feeling

AWESOME AGAIN!

 

Everybody loves turkey dinner.

Nobody loves the massive spread of crusty dishes, gravy boats, and sticky-smeared cutlery afterwards. It looks like hours of work for the poor soul stuck with doing it all.

But that’s when a Super Fast Group Clean-Up can make all those problems disappear. Just grab one of these jobs and work at double time for ten minutes to get it done:

1.The Table Clearer. Are you good at Jenga? Or how about making giant piles of dirty laundry not fall over? If so you are an ideal Table Clearer. Your primary job is piling all the plates as high as possible, while constantly moving dirty knives, forks, and random scraps of food to the top. Another important skill is delivering your dirty dishes to The Dishwasher at a good pace. Too fast and the counter gets crammed. Too slow and you’re in the wrong profession.

2. The Dishwasher. This sudsy someone needs to have a well established Dishwashing Plan. Maybe they’re a two-sink, soapy rinsy, kind of gal, or a furious power-washer kind of guy. The important thing is that the dishes are clean and move straight to Dryer Guy in no time flat. The Dishwasher must be speedy but also have an eye for quality. It takes a long time to build trust and only one half-chewed kernel of corn stuck to the bottom of a plate to lose it.

3.The Putter-Awayer. Salt, pepper, ketchup, we’ve got a home for you. The Putter-Awayer works in tandem with The Table Clearer to get everything back to the fridge or cupboards. Now, The Putter-Awayer has the steepest learning curve of any job because it includes tasks both easy (putting ketchup in the fridge), medium difficulty (arranging half-used salad dressings in the fridge door so another one fits in) and advanced (figuring out the right sized Tupperware container for spaghetti leftovers). We need someone good at geometry here.

4. Dryer Guy. Sorry, man. This is the loser job. If The CEO throws a tea towel at your face and tells you to dry dishes that’s slang for “We don’t trust you with anything else.” Proof is that your entire job can be made obsolete by leaving them on the rack for an hour.

5. The CEO. This is the leader of the group. They assign tasks, put music on, direct traffic flow, and help relieve bottlenecks on the line. They also do small jobs that don’t get noticed like getting a new garbage bag, cheering the group on, and giving everyone a handshake afterwards. The CEO needs to have a solid understanding of all roles so they can assign the best person for each job.

Yes, the Super Fast Group Clean-Up makes a messy kitchen disappear in minutes. A fine ballet of sweatsocks, tea towels, and clinking plates blossoms for ten minutes on the stained linoleum floor and suddenly everything is sparkling clean.

Special points if everyone whistles the Seven Dwarves song from Snow White while doing it.

AWESOME!

Photos from: here and here

It’s how you got here.

It’s how everybody got here.

AWESOME!

Big news, everyone! My new book The Happiness Equation hits March 8th, 2016! I am so pumped to share exciting pre-order details with you on February 15th. Stay tuned!

Photo from: here

The hotel shower faucet is a 7:00am Brain Teaser.

You strip down and peel back the flimsy white curtain to size up the challenger and you find it staring back at you — a clump of shiny dials and spouts with made-up marketing names like Temprol, Relaxashower, or Aquasomething.

Sometimes that shower faucet goes clockwise, sometimes it goes counterclockwise, sometimes you have to turn it past cold to get hot, sometimes you pull it toward you to get it going.

And once you eventually get it flowing, you face another challenge: getting it to stop coming out of the bathtub tap and start shooting out of the shower faucet. Your reward for solving this mystery a few minutes later is an ice-cold spray down your naked, shivering body.

Finally figuring out how your hotel shower works is like jumping into the cockpit during an emergency and landing the plane with no lessons. You were just woken up and thrown into a tough situation with no instructions, but you managed to figure it out and save the day.

AWESOME!

Big news, everyone! My new book The Happiness Equation hits March 8th, 2016! I am so pumped to share exciting pre-order details with you on February 15th. Stay tuned!

Photos from: here and here

AWESOME!

Big news, everyone! My new book The Happiness Equation hits March 8th, 2016! I am so pumped to share exciting pre-order details with you on February 15th. Stay tuned!

Illustration from: Monsieur Cabinet

Do you remember the first time?

Were you leaning back in red plushy tundra at the theater, twisted like a mummy under a basement blanket, or by yourself with headphones on a long-haul flight?

Where were you when you saw your favorite movie?

Me, I was back in college with a few friends on a crappy couch when I saw Annie Hall for the first time. Snappy dialogue, twisting plotlines, and the heart-wrenching complexity of it all sucked me in like a vacuum.

Since then I’ve taken great pleasure giving people their first Annie Hall showing. I take a lot of care with the experience, too: reserving a special night, making popcorn, and tossing their cell phone safely down the basement stairs.

There is a lot of pressure on them to enjoy the movie but that’s part of the fun.

Laughing at their expressions, seeing their eyes flicker, and hearing them guess what will happen next makes it all worth it. Watching your favorite movie with someone who hasn’t seen it before … feels like you’re watching it for the first time again, too.

AWESOME!

 

Big news, everyone! My new book The Happiness Equation hits March 8th, 2016! I am so pumped to share exciting pre-order details with you on February 15th. Stay tuned!