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Great PB&J Debate

There’s a great debate raging in our household, and since I’m on the losing end of a 2-1 vote I have to make my case here and hope for outside support.

The issue is peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Specifically, it’s the proper way to make a peanut butter and jelly sandwich.

Twice in the past month or so (once by each of my roommates) I have been ridiculed for my method, which to them makes no sense. Judging by their reactions, you might think I was using a spoon instead of a knife or cranberry sauce in place of jelly.

No. They say it is crazy to do this:

That’s putting down one piece of bread, spreading on the peanut butter, then spreading on the jelly, and finally placing the other piece of bread on top.

What they think is “obviously better” is this:

Spread the peanut butter on one piece of bread, the jelly on another, then join them together.

The result? The.Exact.Same.Thing. You have two pieces of bread with identical layers of peanut butter and jelly smashed together inside. No difference at all.

Please weigh in.

July 27, 2011 Uncategorized
A Kool-Aid Miracle

I’ll forgive you if you are unaware that I am an infomercial superstar.

After all, my most famous ad was done under the pseudonym Ricardo Simones and it’s possible you weren’t totally sure about our uncanny resemblance.

The infomercial was for a product called the 48 Hour Miracle, a diet drink that promised to help people lose 20 pounds in just two days. In reality, it was really just green Kool-Aid, but for two easy payments of $14.95 it was definitely worth a shot.

We made the ad for a public relations class in college. It was part of a much larger project to create a campaign for a made-up product, and when the option for making a video was presented there was little doubt ours was going to be awesome.

It’s longer than others I have posted here — about 5 minutes — but I think it definitely captures a lot of the stereotypical cheesiness of the genre. For those who went to Susquehanna, we shot the “studio” portion in the basement of the library and the “before” pictures outside a room in Smith Hall.

To me it’s really obvious but since a lot of people ask, yes that is my “announcer” voice at the end.

Hurry while supplies last.

July 24, 2011 Susquehanna Uncategorized video
Auto Incorrect

One of the best developments in the cell phone industry is autocorrect, which takes things like “dtubw” and figures out you really meant to type “drive.”

One of the worst developments in the cell phone industry is autocorrect, which takes roughly 90 percent of what you say and replaces it with entirely incomprehensible statements that somehow include words no one would ever intentionally text.

I’ve gotten used to my phone and its mission to make me look stupid, so I can happily report I only have two issues that constantly pop up. For some reason my phone refuses to believe I ever actually want to use the words “of” and “taco.”

If you hypothetically asked if I wanted to grab something to eat, but I just went to my favorite fast food establishment, I might send you a reply that says, “Sorry, already have a belly full of Taco Bell.”

Of course just because that’s what I intend to send doesn’t mean that’s what you’ll see.

Deep inside my phone gremlins and possibly Keebler elves will be hard at work, analyzing and debating what message they should send out into the world. They’ll analyze all of my previous texts, utterly disregard that history and randomly throw darts at a board full of alternate statements they somehow think will be an improvement over what I typed.

The result will look something like this:

“Sorry, already have a belly full if taxi Bell.”

Thanks, phone. That was helpful.

July 23, 2011 Taco Bell technology Uncategorized
Remember Remember

There’s a lot of information in my brain, and I’m pretty sure about 97.3 percent of it is completely unnecessary.

I’m not some kind of super genius who knows the atomic weight of everything in the periodic table, or one who can name all the kings of England.

Rather, I know things that have absolutely no bearing on my life whatsoever, like the names of multiple characters from “The Hills” and the technical term for the little plastic thing on the end of shoelaces.

Can’t remember what class we had together in high school? I could probably tell you. Why is that important now? It’s not. At all. (Do I like when people ask themselves questions? No. Am I stopping now? Thankfully.)

A few weeks ago I met up with some college friends — Shawn L. and Mindy — for lunch at our favorite pizza place and some quality time strolling around campus. You may recall from previous entries that Shawn L. was one of my roommates.

At one point during the conversation he mentioned this one summer he spent on campus to take extra classes, and couldn’t remember which of the dorm buildings he lived in. I was almost 200 miles away during that summer (2004), and yet I could immediately recall that he spent those months staying in Hassinger Hall.

I can honestly say that conversation is the only time in the past seven years that knowing that minor detail has benefitted me in any way. I hope I didn’t need that space in my brain for something else.

(Totally unrelated note: After roughly two years, I put in the three minutes of effort it took to create my own icon for the address bar. Get excited.)

July 21, 2011 Susquehanna Uncategorized
I (Don’t) See Where You’re Going With This

I can unequivocally say I have just finished the strangest book I will ever read.

I’ve written about some that were tough to get through, but this is something else entirely. It’s one thing to not be totally clear what’s going on with the plot, but usually you at least know who the characters are and have some sense of what they are working towards.

In Italo Calvino’s “If on a winter’s night a traveler” you are the main character. That’s right, he starts the first chapter by saying “You are about to begin reading Italo Calvino’s new novel, If on a winter’s night a traveler.”

The chapters then alternate between you reading the text(s) and your increasingly frantic quest to track down a complete copy of this book, and then another, and then another. The first book has a printing error, and each successive time you’re reading the first chapter of a new book that has its own error — and isn’t the one you thought it was — and then trying to find its remainder.

Confused? I think that’s the point. Calvino wants you to stop thinking so much about the ABCs of standard storytelling and look for something else in the text.

After a while this whole process becomes kind of comical. You know you’re reading what will only be the first part of a story, and yet, each one is so engaging you forget for a few pages and are genuinely disappointed when the chapter ends and you realize you have to move on to a new story and new characters.

This is a book about reading — the process, what we look for in a story and what we get out of the act itself. The “books” have nothing to do with one another, but taken together they still represent something.

Usually when I go to write about a book I first go to each of the dog-earred pages, find the section I think I wanted to reference and type it out here. I always include a notation of the speaker in case I need it later. In this case, I didn’t even try to figure out who was talking since the characters are so nebulous.

Again, no idea who said this, but I think it’s an excellent message about how even the smallest experience long ago can play a part in what we do and experience today:

“And so if by chance I happen to dwell on some ordinary detail of an ordinary day…I can be sure that even in this tiny, insignificant episode there is implicit everything I have experienced, all the past, the multiple pasts I have tried in vain to leave behind me, the lives that in the end are soldered into an overall life, my life.”

Calvino also talks about reading in the same way, that books don’t exist in a vacuum:

“Every new book I read comes to be a part of that overall and unitary book that is the sum of my readings.”

Everything you read builds upon what came before it and creates a bigger story. You and I may have read a lot of the same books, but not all of the same ones. Therefore your “book” is different from mine and affects your next bit of reading in a different way than it would affect me.

That quote is from “a fourth reader,” who is just the fourth person to speak at this table full of people who are reading. That just distinguishes them from the “third reader” and the “second reader.” These are not be confused as being linked in any way to “The Reader” (you) or “The Other Reader” (a girl you meet at a bookstore while trying to find a correct copy of the first book). I told you this book wasn’t “normal.”

While I was reading this book my friend Regan posted on Twitter about a slight issue she had with her own reading:

Having turned the page on three or four now-interrupted stories, I could somewhat sympathize. Even one of Calvino’s characters (the reader, not THE The Reader, but another the reader, ugh) laments that kind of disjointed experience:

“I am forced to stop reading just when they become most gripping. I can’t wait to resume, but when I think I am reopening the book I began, I find a completely different book before me.”

But we can also have that same kind of experience with complete books. A single book can change over time, as we change and then go back to it for another reading. Like the quote about small things building up into our “overall life” we approach a repeat reading from a different place, and thus are open to new emotions and interpretations.

The third reader (from the same group as the fourth reader above) isn’t sure if he is changing or if it is the act of reading itself which is just inherently unrepeatable:

“At every rereading I seem to be reading a new book, for the first time. Is it I who keep changing and seeing new things of which I was not previously aware? Or is reading a construction that assumes form, assembling a great number of variables, and therefore something that cannot be repeated twice according to the same pattern?”

I’m definitely reading a more standard text next, but glad I made it through this one. Not often you read something so very different.

July 15, 2011 books Uncategorized
Creative Company

I haven’t exactly been putting up tons of content lately, and as someone who follows other blogs I know that probably leaves a huge, immense, devastating, heart-breaking hole in your life.

My answer to that — other than obviously posting more of my own stuff — is to share some sites from my creative/quirky friends.

You know all about AV’s website from an earlier post, so I don’t have to badger you again to check it out (though you should).

I’ll start with Jen(n)a (@jenaardell) whose name I have spelled that way since roughly 2003. We went to college together, and at some point I was really unsure of how many Ns were in here name, so I just made the one sort of optional. She’s a photographer who specializes in retro pictures (shot today, look vintage) as well as Polaroids. She also happens to end up with super cool gigs covering her favorite band and mine for LA Weekly.

Keeping in the college crowd, let’s move on to Jason’s blog. First I want to acknowledge the great pun at work here. Jason lives in Denver, the Mile High City, where one may experience altitude sickness. He’s also very opinionated, and putting those together arrived at Attitude Sickness. I remember him consulting the Facebook world and considering a number of titles in the same punny spirit, but I’m glad he settled on this one. Lately, most of the content has been about an extended trip he made to the Philippines and Vietnam. But this is a blog that has as one of its categories “Uncategorized Rambling” and thus is worthy of a read.

What’s that? You want more from the Susquehanna University classes of 2005/06? Fine.

Brooke went there too, and has a blog I would describe using the words snarky, nerdy, occasionally about her upcoming wedding, and ultimately entertaining. I did have to actually Google the blog title on this one to find out what it was actually referencing and I’m proud to report it appears to be a character in “Pride and Prejudice.” I was worried it was something far, far girlier.

Just so you think I read things other than those written by my fellow Crusaders, I’ll share one more.

For anyone interested in filmmaking or any creative process/endeavor, check out Camden’s blog about her experience creating a documentary “about the Montagnard people who served as American allies during the Vietnam War.” She has chronicled big-picture stuff like finding out about the history behind the story, as well as really specific posts about technical challenges in the editing process. She also shares a lot of tips about time management and the things she has learned about herself, which I think really translate to a lot of facets of life. I don’t actually know her, my brother does, but we were introduced through Twitter when she was looking for old Vietnam footage and figuring out how to capture 8mm film to video just as I was doing the same process at my old job. Good times.

July 13, 2011 Uncategorized
Build This House With Me

I took a video editing class in college that included a project to make a two-minute trailer for the movie of your choice.

It wasn’t about recreating the real trailer, but rather doing whatever you wanted to make it your own. On the surface this sounds really easy, but distilling a two-hour film down to a trailer that highlights enough to get people interested without giving too much away is a bit tough.

Neither I nor most of my group had the least bit of preference for which film to tackle, so we ended up going with Jason’s pick of “Life As A House.” This added another layer of difficulty since I’m pretty sure none of the rest of us had ever heard of the movie, let alone seen it.

Fortunately the local video rental place had a copy — VHS I believe — and a few viewings later we came up with this:

At gunpoint I could recite this entire thing word-for-word. I may have seen it a few too many times.

I’m especially proud of the ending, where Kevin Kline’s character is smashing all the little models to the beat of the music as if they are drums. This is one of those happy accidents that pops up in creative ventures sometimes. As I recall, the footage just happened to almost line up when we first cut it, so it was just a matter of tweaking things a bit (like slowing down the last shot) to get it just right.

So how did we do? Here’s the actual trailer from 2001:

We didn’t watch the real one until after ours was done. We felt like they told a totally different story, one that seemed to put a happier spin on the movie than what was actually there. Maybe they thought more people would want to go see it that way.

Things didn’t go so well at the box office though. Maybe they should have hired us instead.

July 2, 2011 movies Susquehanna Uncategorized video
Now Boarding

It’s funny to stop and think about some of the things we hang onto.

Everyone has at least something in their house that they’ve carried for years for really no reason. They can’t explain why they still have it, they just do.

The other day I came across this:

That’s a whiteboard — still wrapped in plastic — that I got from my grandmother shortly after I graduated high school. Ten years ago.

I brought it with me when I went off to school in Pennsylvania, but obviously never used it. It spent a lot of time in closets during the next four years as I went through the cycle of remembering I had it, taking it to school, forgetting about it, then taking it back home with a vow to actually use it next year.

When I went to grad school in Maryland, the white board went too. Same when I moved to Florida and subsequently back to Virginia. I’m surprised I haven’t accidentally ripped the plastic during all those trips.

The real question is, does the pen still work?

July 2, 2011 Uncategorized
Right Way to Write

Some people need a special space and just the right conditions in order to write.

A quiet office with the perfect color of paint on the walls is necessary for them to focus and channel their creative energies. Fortunately, I am not one of those people.

At work, I have to write stories with whatever noise is going on in the newsroom — televisions, phones, people shrieking at the sight of mice — and the news doesn’t stop just because I don’t like the bland desk that’s holding up my monitor:

In the spirit of full disclosure that’s not actually my desk. It’s AV’s, but we work at the same place and I assure you mine looks the same.

At home, I have a lot more control and thanks to the wonders of laptops and wireless Internet, I can work just about anywhere I want. Not that I do, but I could.

Everything you read here is composed in one of two places. There’s the desktop computer in my bedroom:

Or more frequently, it’s sitting downstairs in a recliner using my laptop:

I guess I do have one special stipulation though — I find it very hard to work in silence. Maybe that goes back to writing so often in the newsroom that I’m used to having at least some background noise. I find the sound of silence somewhat distracting.

Ever since college I have turned to music to combat this problem. On very rare occasions that means opening up iTunes and letting it skip around my playlist playing whatever it wants. Usually though, I listen to one of three artists, and in an odd twist, this is the only time I ever listen to them.

The first is Nickel Creek. I can accomplish absolutely anything with them as my background noise. The only problem is that I only have one of their CDs, so the window of productivity is pretty limited.

The second, Delta Goodrem, does not present that issue. I think I have three of her albums, and thus can work for hours with her wailing away at a just-audible level.

If things really aren’t going well and I’m having a hard time getting myself to just buckle down and work, it’s time to go to the secret weapon — DMX. I know, you probably assumed from the start that DMX was one of the three, but I had to make sure. His song “What’s My Name” basically sounds to me like “Do Some Work.”

When even that doesn’t work, I may solve my Rubik’s Cube in a last-ditch effort to get the creative juices going. But sometimes even the best of us can totally fail, and end up opting for more successful pursuits such as napping or quality time with the Playstation.

That may mean you go a week (or two) without seeing any new content, but if you get too desperate you can always just pretend it’s 2006 and read those entries instead.

June 30, 2011 Uncategorized writing
We’re Jambin’

My phone buzzed just after noon today, waking me up from a solid 12 hours of sleep.

That initially sounds like an amazing way to start any weekend, but given that I only slept three hours the day before it’s actually not that great at all. You might even say I’m somewhat sleep deprived.

I was talking to AV after my extended sleep session, and she sent me a link to an article she had just read giving five signs that you’re not getting enough sleep. Number 5 on the list: “You’ve become a klutz.”

Last night, on just the three hours of sleep, I decided the last thing I wanted to do was actually cook dinner. The word “Chipotle” sound a lot better than “effort.”

Before I could make the short drive though, I needed to grab my wallet and keys from my bedroom. When I walked out of the room, I caught the pocket of my shorts on the door latch, which somehow then whipped my hand into the door jamb so hard it immediately left a giant purple welt. I momentarily thought I broke my hand.

I did a terrible job of explaining that scene to AV, so I made her a diagram that I’ll share in case I failed again:

It’s hard to say if sleep deprivation was to blame, or if it was just natural klutziness. But since I went a full day on 12 hours of sleep without running myself into a doorway, let’s go with the sleepiness.

June 24, 2011 not smart Uncategorized