Busking

There used to be this busker on Manhattan's Upper West Side. Wearing a microphone and a beatbox, he'd stand on a street corner (usually Broadway and 72nd) rapping the day away.

What made him special was his facility for improvising, for working people into his raps as they walked by. Always rhyming, never missing the beat, he'd describe your clothes, your expression, your hair or your dog in his rap, grabbing your attention just long enough for you to reach in your pocket and toss him some change. Then he'd spot someone else and work them into his spiel.

He often drew a crowd, especially at night. His raps were catchy but they certainly weren't vinyl-worthy. What attracted us was the immediacy of his performance, the freshness of his rhymes, the anticipation of expecting the unexpected, the tension of watching him work without a net, wondering how he'd manage to keep it all going.

For someone known as the Analyst, I've had a frustratingly difficult time figuring out why I blog. I like to tell myself that blogging fulfills some inner expressive need, that the act of creation is what it's all about, that it doesn't matter how it's received so long as it does what it needs to do for me, whatever that is.

Or sometimes I think this is just an electronic party, in which my posts mingle with your posts and your comments to form an extended conversation. If so, it's an odd conversation: most of the time, I'm talking to myself, ignoring what's being said around me, all the while concealing myself behind a mask.

I expect for some blogging is another way of standing on a soap box in Hyde Park, preaching to the air, hoping to convert the odd passerby while dodging the rotten tomatoes. Not being infused with a missionary zeal, at least for the moment, that explanation doesn't explain why I'm doing this. Or so I'd like to think.

Most of the time I think I'm just a busker, standing on a street corner, spinning out posts in exchange for hits, for comments, for links, for correspondence, for the pocket change of your appreciation, secretly ashamed of my begging, hoping no one I know walks by and sees me reduced to this needy state.

First Take

I once read an interview with a singer who recorded a song with Neil Young.

She arrived at the studio and Neil thrust a lyric sheet into her hand and asked her to rehearse with him. He sang it through once, then asked her to sing it with him. They sang it together, then she turned to ask him how it went, whether he wanted her to change anything when they recorded it.

We just did, he told her. She was done before she realized she'd started.

I'd like to limit this blog to first-takes, so I've vowed to never hit the "Save as Draft" button. Otherwise I might start thinking too much.

The Conversation

I have this odd habit of evaluating myself as I speak.

While I carry on a dialogue with you, I am meta-analyzing what I say, thinking of what I could've said or should've said. I can do this in great detail, playing out multi-layered decision trees to plot out where things are, or could be, headed based on the next words that come out of my mouth. Of course, I also think of how to interpret what I just said and what I'm going to say. Basically, my mind's going sixty even when my mouth's only doing twenty.

After years of practice, I'm able to carry on this internal critical discourse without interrupting my external speaking. However, even I have limits -- all that thinking limits my ability to pay attention to you and what you're saying to me.

So, next time we're talking, please shut up and let me think.

Thanks.

Public Speaking

People often ask me how I got to be such a good public speaker.

I tell them you just have to be yourself, and then hope that yourself is a good public speaker.

By the way, the other day while speaking of sales projections to a large room packed with bored sales reps, in the middle of a particularly challenging explication of a five year sales trend chart, I paused for a moment, said "Before I forget, I'd like to congratulate Vice President Cheney for having a lesbian daughter," then I went back to my chart.

Where do I get this stuff? I dunno. You either have it or you don't, I guess.

Imagine I'm Naked

I love public speaking. People find that hard to believe, but if you get up there and you're loving it, people respond well.

I hate preparing for public speaking, though. So today when I got up to deliver an address explaining the major challenges facing our new product line, I just talked about the stuff I read on blogs last night.

I was loving it and, judging by the smiles on their faces, they were too. In fact, they ate it up, applauding wildly when I finished. It went over so well, the boss just called me in to his office. Probably wants to hear more about my brother's ideas for fixing porn movies. Or maybe the clog story again.

Gotta fly!

What a Click!

There's this guy in our office who's got the most annoying habit of punctuating everything he says by winking his right eye, pointing his right index finger at you, and clicking his tongue against the inside of his teeth. All at the same time.

Lately I've noticed him doing it more frequently, often resorting to his click routine in lieu of any conversation. Pass him in the hallway, get a click in return. Ask him how he's doing, get a click in return. Ask him where's that report you were expecting yesterday, get a click in return.

I always think of him when I see Amazon.com's "1 Click Ordering" button. Perhaps others do too, for we've starting calling him the Prick with the 1-Click Tick Shtik.

My Hero

In the pantheon of blogging gods, the deity behind The Single Bitter Announcement Weblog surely reigns supreme.

I'm humbled.

Scram

Oh, it's you again. What are you doing here? Shouldn't you be working? Or studying? Or exercising? Or spending more time with your loved ones? Or playing outside in the fresh air? I can think of a thousand better things you could be doing with your time than reading blogs. Especially surly blogs like this one. So go on, beat it! Scram!

No Apologies

I haven't posted anything in a few days. I believe proper blog etiquette requires me to apologize for not having posted. Or maybe I should have warned you in advance that I wouldn't be posting for a few days. That seems to be the standard practice on blogs these days.

Not on this blog.

I don't remember receiving your subscription payment. I don't remember promising you a rose garden, let alone a frequently-updated blog. Show me the contract that obligates me to do anything for you. Since when am I your performing flea?

This is a new blog, and you're not used to my ways, so maybe I need to make something crystal-clear right now before you start getting the wrong idea. I'll blog when I want to, and I won't when I don't. I won't warn you when I'm going to be away, and I won't apologize when I return. You're entitled to nothing more than what I give you when I give it. If you don't like it, leave. There are plenty of other sniveling bloggers out there anxious to cater to your every whim.

Speaking of which, it might be fun to write a blog that does nothing more than apologize for not blogging. My evil twin (yes, I'm not the only evil one in the family) actually started his blog with this concept in mind (here's his first post, the best and truest thing he's ever written), but his narcissism quickly pushed that idea aside in favor of cloyingly self-absorbed observatory postings that suck the life out of life itself.

Pieces of April

I just saw the low budget indie shot-on-digital film "Pieces of April" and I have to say I'm amazed they could make an all-digital movie for only $500,000.  Most of the characters looked so lifelike and moved so smoothly that I could've sworn they were real people.  To be sure, the character voiced by Katie Holmes did look like something only a computer software engineer could dream up, a bit "off" if you know what I mean, but if you pay attention while watching you'll see that her artificial inhuman look and jerky movements, those rough pixelated edges and the overall roboticism of her character are key to the movie's central theme of humanity and inhumanity. 

You don't get quality CGI like that with a $500,000 budget.  I have no idea how they did it, other than to guess that the CGI company rendered it at a reduced rate in exchange for a share of the film's profits.  I'll bet at the time they joked about getting their piece of "April."

Swingers

Reading "Bush Signs Tax Bill in Swing State of Iowa" (AP), my first thought was "since when is Iowa a swing state?"

I'd expect a swing state to have more trees, both to provide convenient branches from which to swing and to provide lumber for the construction of standalone swing sets. I've always considered heavily wooded states like Massachusetts, home of seminal wooden swing set manufacturer ChildLife, and Maine, home of playset manufacturer CedarWorks, to be the key swing states. I also acknowledge that partisans of Wisconsin-based Swing-N-Slide's swing creations consider that state to be a swing state as well. While I don't agree with their categorization, I respect their right to assert it.

But I've yet to hear anything swing-worthy about Iowa, either as a particularly swing-happy state or as a producer of swings for other states, so I remain flummoxed by this article's puzzling headline and unable to read the rest of it.

Verismellitude

Can a character come alive on the page whilst the writer ignores significant but, uh, delicate aspects of the character's character?

Take, for instance, my friend Kevin. He's a meat and potatoes kind of guy, never eats green vegetables and rarely eats fruit. His idea of whole grains is a bowl of Sugar Frosted Flakes.

You cannot understand what it's like to share a car with Kevin on a road trip to Las Vegas if you don't understand the immense volume of gas he expels from his overstuffed colon each hour. And you cannot understand why none of us will ever share a hotel room with him again unless you understand what happens when that overstuffed colon finally frees its contents in a hotel bathroom that doesn't have an exhaust fan or an outside window. Wallpaper peels, strong men wilt, guys in hazmat suits appear, doctors run tests.

But I'd bet 99 out of 100 novelists would ignore this delicate detail of my friend Kevin's character. And that, I submit, would remove about 99% of what's interesting about Kevin, leaving an empty, but deceptively sweet-smelling, shell on the page.

Used Floss

Flossing is one of the smallest but most consistently satisfying of life's pleasures. Scraping the sides of one's teeth, smoothing their rough edges, surveying the plaque and stray bits of food stuck to the used floss, occasionally catching a whiff of particularly rotten detritus flushed from your now sweet-smelling mouth, it's really a very satisfying process.

You might think of this blog as Outer Life's used floss. Or, this being a free country, you might not. You're bound to think whatever you want to think, so why don't you take a stab at this blogging thing and save me the trouble.

The Great Debate

Last night was a great debate. At the ice cream store. Mint chip or cookies and cream? I went back and forth, back and forth, then finally made up my mind and asked for "mint cream." GAFFE! I blew it. Lost the debate. Will lose the election.

This morning the nice people from the Kennedy School called to offer a teaching post starting next semester. Awfully thoughtful of them....