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Get Out of My Head

As a twin, I have been asked countless times during my life whether I have the ability to communicate telepathically with my sister.

There’s also the idea that one day I might feel a phantom pain in my finger and find out she shut hers in a door.

If you’re a fan of twin mythology, I’m sorry to say I can’t remember either of those things ever happening.

However, I did have a crazy coincidental communication moment with my younger brother today.

This morning I was thinking about a really random question I had about a website we set up a few years ago. I sent him an email about something else, but forgot to ask about the website. Hours later he responded to my message, and completely out of the blue answered my website question.

I can’t even begin to remember the last time we talked about that site, let alone this particular issue. What is clear is that my brother has hacked my mind.

I should probably change the password.

February 9, 2011 family Uncategorized
Growing Up on the Farm

I grew up on a dairy farm. Well, it wasn’t a dairy farm when I lived there, but at one time it was.

I just finished reading “Stories From Floris,” a collection of essays written by people who grew up in the same area I did during the early- to mid-1900s. Back then it was all farm land, but except for a few remaining landmarks all that is left are subdivisions and shopping centers.

My neighborhood, Copper Crossing, was built on the land once known as Blossom Hill. A woman who grew up there said her family “had dairy and beef cattle, pigs, poultry, dogs and cats, and a Chincoteague pony.” There are plenty of dogs and cats still there, but in all my years I can honestly say I never saw a Chincoteague pony roaming our streets.

While many of the essays followed the same formula of naming every person ever related to anyone who set foot on each piece of land, it was neat hearing some of the things that never changed. Kids at Blossom Hill played tag at dusk, running around on the same ground that me and my friends used to play flashlight tag on summer nights.

Children also used the many hills in the area for sledding in the winter, doing their best to stay out of the creek that ran through the property. Across the street from my house was a great sledding hill, which with a little more speed than we could ever muster would have landed us in those chilly waters (I may have fallen in once while trying to walk on some ice).

The first person to settle that land came in 1742, when the property was part of Loudon County. Today it is in Fairfax County — a change that unfortunately cost me many snow days as a kid since our neighbors to the west always seemed to have school canceled when we didn’t.

Almost all of the essays lamented the way things have changed. There was an incredible sense of community and a way of life the writers really missed in our modern times. Where their farms once sprawled across the Floris area (now Oak Hill, or Herndon), now there are hundreds of homes packed together.

I put together a quick slide show of the area today, where neighborhoods and shopping centers bear the names of old family farms:

Of course, one nice thing about our community is that there are still some links to the past.

Just across from my neighborhood is the Frying Pan Meeting House, a worship space built in 1791 that hosted services until the late 1960s. Behind the building is a small cemetery where many of the area’s early settlers are buried.

Up the street is a church built in 1895 that served as the main congregation among Floris residents. Today the building — with a few additions — is a Korean Presbyterian Church.

One of my favorite places is Frying Pan Park, a working 1920s-1950s era farm that gives a sense of what the surrounding area was like during that time. It has historical farm equipment, a collection of animals and a nature trail that is one of the most peaceful places I have found to run.

On the park land there are a few buildings left from the early school system. The 1911 Floris Elementary School is there, as well as a 1921 building that high school boys used to learn tractor repair and woodworking (I attended the newer elementary school just up the street, which was built in 1954).

One of those boys wrote about his incredible role in the community, which we might want to think about bringing back today. He was involved in the Future Farmers of America, played on the football team and during his junior and senior years of high school drove the school bus.

That’s right, a high school student was in charge of picking up his classmates and getting them safely to school. I can’t decide if that system today would result in fewer or more surly bus drivers.

If I had read this book a few years ago — when I actually got it — I could have shared a picture of the community’s general store, which also for a time served as the post office. The store and an adjacent house later became a furniture store, which continued to operate when I lived there. A two-lane main road ran just past the store, but became a traffic bottleneck to wider parts of the road on either side. The road eventually needed to be widened, and while the four-lane road is nice, the chain link fence that runs alongside is not as quaint as the historic structure that had to be knocked down.

A look at some of the pieces that remain:

A quick shoutout to friend AV’s blog, Multimediating101.com, where I read about both the free slideshow creation site I used here as well as the type of camera that took the pictures.

February 4, 2011 books home Uncategorized
One, Two, Tree

If you walked into my house right now, you might make fun of the fact that it is February 3 and we still have a Christmas tree up.

I could tell you that I’m lazy and just haven’t gotten around to taking it down. I could also make the case that it is strategically located in front of a curtain-free window, providing much-needed sun-blocking services:

But really, none of those things would be true. The real problem is that you have never heard of a Super Bowl tree:

Now, I know what you’re thinking — what happens after the Super Bowl ends on Sunday? Well clearly you’ve never heard of a Valentine’s Day tree:

And I can even guess the next thing you’re thinking — so, what, a St. Patrick’s Day tree after that? No. Don’t be ridiculous.

February 3, 2011 Christmas Uncategorized
Snow More, I Beg You

Mother Nature is capable of snarling even your best-laid plans.

Earlier this week, a snowstorm rolled through our area at the perfect time to make an apocalyptic scene of the evening rush hour. I had watched the forecast on the local news for days, and had a pretty good sense of just when the worst was supposed to hit.

That led to a plan to beat the snow, which actually just worked to put me right in the middle of the madness.

I normally drive to the Metro at about 8:30 p.m. in order to arrive at work sometime between 9:30 and 9:45. But the morning of the snow, every meteorologist said the worst of the snow was going to start between 4 and 5 p.m., and that we would get a total of about 3-5 inches of snow where I live.

With that information, my plan was simple — drive to the Metro parking garage at 3:30, nap there for a few hours, then take an early train into the city to grab a bite to eat before work.

I slept for a few hours, and woke up to check the latest forecast. In that time, the timeline for the worst of the snow had been moved up and the expected amount of snow had been doubled. Awesome.

As I walked out the door just before 3:30, traffic was moving smoothly on the road in front of our neighborhood and only a light sleet was falling from the sky. I felt encouraged and confident that my plan was going to turn out well.

Given the conditions, I skipped the small, windy road I usually take to the Metro, opting instead for a series of highways (Fairfax County Parkway, Route 50, Interstate 66) that I assumed would be in better shape. Unfortunately, so did everyone else, and the moment I got onto the Fairfax County Parkway, traffic came to a complete stop.

And then the snow started.

Having grown up in this area, I know it only takes a few flakes to turn normally insane drivers into something that resembles a herd of newborn giraffes trying to find their footing. Cars slide left and right off the road. A driver slams on the gas, sees that isn’t getting him anywhere and decides to just keep flooring it in hopes something magically changes. In short, it isn’t pretty.

The route I chose usually takes about 20 minutes to drive. In the ever-deteriorating conditions on this day, it took me six hours. The trip was 360 minutes of driving 10 feet, stopping for 10 minutes, driving seven feet, stopping for 15 minutes, dodging stalled cars, merging two lanes into one to get past the guy who couldn’t make it up the hill and watching as pedestrians easily out-walked even the fastest car.

In short, it was a nightmare. If it weren’t for a phone equipped with the Internet and an iPod packed with podcasts, I may have gone insane.

At about the two-hour mark, I had made it roughly four miles from my house. I was on a section of the Parkway that features a slight uphill. The slow pace of traffic was actually helping a lot of drivers — since we weren’t going more than two miles per hour, it was rarely necessary to touch the gas pedal. But some people missed the memo.

It was here that I had my only close call of the trip. A driver had managed to get his car sideways across both lanes about midway up the small hill. I watched, almost in a daze, as he repeatedly slammed on the accelerator, alternating between forward and reverse, in an attempt to get pointed in the right direction. The result was a lot of noise, and a car sliding uncontrollably sideways down the hill. A few times the car came within inches of my own, until thankfully there was enough of an opening for me to squeeze by safely.

A lot of drivers recognized their lack of ability to handle the conditions (or just became frustrated and gave up), abandoning their cars on the side of the road. Or sometimes in the middle of the road. As each piece of a mile went on, I had a rolling mental calculus going to consider my options. The range started at pull over and walk home, pull over and walk to my parents’ house, pull over and walk to the Metro, and of course pull over and start a dance-off in the middle of the snowy road. OK, maybe not the last one.

Strangely though, at no point did it occur to me to take a picture of the scene. I mean, it’s not like I didn’t have the time. So to make up for my lack of photo evidence, please enjoy this photo from snowy Alaska featuring my aunt, grandfather and mom holding a group of fish:

Photo unrelated in any way to this story

The option I decided to pursue was basically, “I have gone this far, I might as well keep going.” As the hours and hours rolled on, I took solace in the small milestones: getting to the next intersection, passing another snowplow idling on the shoulder, seeing another police car dodge oncoming traffic instead of using our lanes. I can’t even describe my excitement when I actually exited onto a new road.

Of course, the entire time I was driving I became more and more sure that I was going to make it to the Metro, only to have them close down the above-ground portion of the system. That would include the station I was driving to, and supposedly happens when there is eight inches of snow.

Shortly before I arrived at the station, I checked Facebook from my phone. One of my contacts had posted something about Metro shutting down…the bus system. I only had a small heart attack when reading the first half of that sentence. Thankfully though, the train portion of my trip was entirely uneventful and I made it into work only half an hour after my shift started. My dinner plans shifted to what I could get out of a vending machine, but at least I was there.

On the way home the next morning, the carnage was really incredible. The roads were passable, but the huge collection of abandoned cars was quite a sight. I would estimate I passed at least 100 cars ditched in the snow, some of which were still sitting in the middle of a lane.

So I guess the lesson is here is that planning ahead is good, but planning ahead better is better. Oh, and sometimes the uneventful 20-minute drive is something to be celebrated.

January 29, 2011 insanity snow Uncategorized
Write On

Motivation is an important force in the creative process.

It’s one thing to have an idea, but without the proper push to actually make it happen the idea is worthless.

Last year, my friend AV (of Godfather advocacy fame) and I both started writing novels that quickly made it into the “I should really start working on that again” portion of our lives. I even signed up for the National Novel Writing Month project in an attempt to make me focus. But due to certain circumstances — mainly that November is a terrible month to work intensively on anything — I stopped writing after just a few days.

For those of you who are looking for two good books to read in the future, I have good news. AV and I are committed to making 2011 a successful writing year.

Our plan is simple: discuss each other’s projects, set deadlines and nag/inspire the other to write. Story outlines and character sketches will be done by April 1. Intensive writing is scheduled for the three-month period beginning June 1.

I’m not sure yet when our Pulitzers will be awarded, but I’ll keep you updated.

January 28, 2011 Uncategorized writing
Foundation of Sand

With all of the books I have read in my life, I have never regretted reading one because of its physical size.

Until now.

The first book of 2011 was John Grisham’s “The Last Juror,” a story about a young guy who buys a newspaper in a small Southern town where a horrifying murder happens. From the title you can probably get that the resulting trial is a big part of the story.

What isn’t big is the book itself — its 486 pages are contained in a roughly 4×7 inch paperback package. As the last book of a year, this wouldn’t be a problem. I’m not an engineer, but if the towers of books I built during past years are any indication, I could have some issues down the road:

The 2009 stack

The potentially disastrous base of 2011

The book itself is what you would expect from a multi-best-selling mystery/thriller author who basically has his own shelf at Barnes & Noble. Since this one involved a main character running a weekly newspaper, I was able to connect with some of the “slower” portions of the story.

I couldn’t help but laugh at some of the journalistic standards the newspaper editor, Willy, held himself too. Basically if he thought what he was saying could be right, and he wanted that to be the truth, he went with it.

The main crime involves the rape and murder of a mother with two small children who were in the house at the time. Relying on an unnamed source, Willy described the house and “estimated that the children’s beds were about thirty feet from their mother’s.”

He goes on to write that “experts” say it is unlikely the children would testify at trial — his expert being one of the reporters at his newspaper. I’m not saying this kind of thing doesn’t happen all the time, but it’s certainly not what we learn at journalism school.

Writing for a weekly newspaper can be very different from a news outlet with daily deadlines. If you cover something five days before the story has to be written, there isn’t the same energy and pressure to write your piece right away.

The man accused of the mother’s murder (who is arrested in the first chapter — no spoilers) goes on trial and the jury reaches a verdict. Even though he has several days before his deadline, Willy goes directly to his office and begins “typing with a fury” in order to capture the moment.

When I was in college, I wrote for our weekly newspaper, which had a Thursday afternoon deadline. I covered mostly sports, which involved going to a lot of basketball and volleyball games on Saturdays and Tuesdays. At first, I rarely wrote about the Saturday games right after they happened because I had so much time and more fun things to do those nights.

But then I discovered how much better the stories were when I captured them rather than interpreting them through my notes. There was a different energy to walking directly back to my dorm, sitting down at my desk and writing about the game without having to rely on what I had scribbled down.

Because of the genre, I don’t want to say anything more about the story. It’s not a physically solid book for foundation purposes, but storywise I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend it.

January 23, 2011 books Uncategorized
An Offer You Can’t Refuse

Everyone has some piece of iconic pop culture they somehow missed along the way.

It’s the kind of thing you are almost ashamed to admit to your friends, and when you do they respond with something like, “WHAT?!?!?!?!”

Until today, the biggest thing on my list was the movie “The Godfather.” I’ll wait while you complete your “WHAT?!?!!?!?!”

Good? OK.

I can’t fully explain how I missed out on this movie until the year 2011, but it’s probably mainly because it’s part of a trilogy. Once you watch the first movie, you are pretty much committed to watching the entire series, and locking myself into 9-10 hours of “Godfather” material seemed like a huge commitment.

Of course, that didn’t stop me from watching hundreds of other movies that most people would not consider remotely worth their time. Whatever. “Happy Gilmore” is awesome.

Having now seen the movie, I wish I had seen it long ago, preferably around the age of 6. That’s because just about every part of the movie has been parodied to death by every possible form of media I have seen since then. When I see a guy in a bed, I know instantly there’s a horse head in there with him. When they mention the “five families” all I can picture is Kevin and Andy from “The Office” arranging a meeting with the companies in their office park.

Oh and Marlon Brando. I may have seen some versions of his character before today.

One problem with movies “you have to see” is the expectation created by others. In recent days my friend AV has been advocating for “The Godfather.” While her high regard for the movie did set up a lofty standard, I would blame any shortcomings on all those elements I felt like I had already experienced. On a four-star scale, I’d give it 3.5.

The experience reminded me of my introduction to “Almost Famous.” I say “introduction” because I have never actually seen the movie.

I tried.

In college I spent some quality time with a girl who LOVED that movie. She insisted I watch it. Then insisted some more. Eventually I agreed to watch it, and made it a solid 20 minutes into the film before falling asleep.

I don’t think she was very pleased with that, but in my defense I was worthless after like 11 p.m. back then. A few weeks later my roommate Jason and his ladyfriend (or a ladyfriend, I don’t remember) joined us for a second chance viewing.

I woke up at some point during the credits to Jason’s ladyfriend laughing at the fact that I had been snoring…for a while. Whoops.

I learned a lot from that movie without even watching it. Mainly, if someone says it is one of their favorite movies of all time, you should probably do whatever is necessary to at least keep your eyelids open.

Even after working an overnight shift, I made it through “The Godfather” with no problems.

The Godfather 1.
Almost Famous 0.

January 13, 2011 Happy Gilmore movies Uncategorized
Leave a Message After the Beep

When someone asks you about a voicemail they left a month ago or you come across an email you have repeatedly avoided responding to, there’s a problem.

Almost two weeks into the new year, I am proud to report I am crushing my goal of addressing that issue. It’s not like I never responded to people, but I found that if I didn’t immediately answer there was a strong chance I would forget to get back to people.

I used to try to keep my personal email inbox to no more than 25 messages at a time because the client only showed that many items on its first page — anything after that was bound to be forgotten. About once a week I would go through and address a bunch of emails, but that only served to get me down to about 18 messages on a good day.

Right now I’m at six.

So if you leave me a voicemail, send me an email, comment here/Facebook/Twitter or even yell something as you drive by on the street — in 2011 I’m going to give you a prompt response.

Of course prompt is relative. Just like I wouldn’t expect you to respond to my 4 a.m. text, if your message comes while I am asleep (likely in the middle of the day), all bets are off. If I have to research something or craft a diplomatic answer, again, wait times may increase.

Among other things, one item I forgot about last year was the promise I made to provide a family member with helpful fantasy football information. At Thanksgiving this lapse was blamed for the less-than-stellar performance of her team.

But while I fully accept responsibility for dropping the communication ball, this incident serves to illustrate the two-way process involved here — if a reasonable response time has passed, please ask again. I may forget once, but not twice. (Ok, maybe twice, but certainly not three times).

I know you’re ready to test me, so feel free to comment below or on any of the previous posts. CJHANNAS version 2011 is ready.

January 10, 2011 technology Uncategorized
Tell Me a Story

A few years ago I challenged myself to read 20 books in one year, kept a record of all of my reading and on December 31 took a step back to recap the year that was.

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December 31, 2010 book recap books nerdness
Nobody Likes Milhouse!

I like “The Simpsons.”

That actually might not capture my true feelings. Let me try again.

I just read a 430-page book about “The Simpsons.”

Chris Turner’s “Planet Simpson: How a Cartoon Masterpiece Defined a Generation” is a discussion of the social impacts of the show, both the factors that brought it to popularity and the reflections of our world depicted in Springfield.

It’s not a book solely for super Simpsons nerds, since Turner gives a enough background with his show references that even those who haven’t seen a particular episode can follow along. Though most of the important points he makes seem to reference Season 7, so maybe watch that first.

His discussion veers into pop/political/tech influences as whole, whether that’s early ’90s indie filmmakers (Tarantino/Rodriguez/Coens), the music of Nirvana or the early Internet culture. At times it’s easy to forget the book is ostensibly about “The Simpsons,” but all of that background helps to give the show a context.

I took away three major arguments from the book — Homer as America, Consumerism is King (or not), and Culture: Reflected or Absorbed?

Homer as America

Homer Simpson is brash, selfish, loud and inflexible in his beliefs. He does what serves his life at that moment the best, or what he thinks is best for those around him. The consequences of those actions on others are not important. He is a force in the town — what he does affects everyone and nobody has a choice in the matter.

Turner argues Homer is an allegory of America. What the United States does (good/bad/well-meaning/successful) has a great impact on the rest of the world, whether that involves economic policy, military action or FCC policy.

More importantly, there is an acceptance of that force, a resignation by the people of Springfield/the world that this is just another factor in their lives that isn’t going to change soon. It’s what Homer’s friend Lenny would call “Homer being Homer.”

But it is the show’s ability to lampoon that type of influence through the Homer character that Turner argues makes it not only popular in the U.S., but especially so abroad.

“The show can look, at times, like a pirate broadcast from inside the palace gates, the work of double agents whose sympathies might well lie as much with those caught under America’s thumb as with the people in charge,” Turner writes. “In the realm of mainstream, mass-market American pop disseminated worldwide, ‘The Simpsons’ is — by a wide margin — American society’s most strident critic.”

Just before this section, however, he also notes the work of a Mexican scholar who says that for those who see life in America as a perfect, unattainable example, the show serves to put the reality of American life within reach.

Consumerism is King (or not)

Besides creating a deep character universe that allows for boundless realistic storytelling, it is the underlying satirical take on many aspects of our culture that keeps the show running. Turner highlights the show’s railing against rampant consumerism and its ill effects. The copy I have is dated 2004, so the commentary is post-dotcom bubble, but pre-financial meltdown.

One interesting thing for me in reading this book is the description of the early years of the show. I was certainly alive in the early ’90s, but I wasn’t exactly plugged into everything that was going on.

In describing the boom in the SUV-driving culture, Turner talks about an episode in which Marge Simpson gets a behemoth Canyonero. It’s the typical over-the-top vehicle for a mom who’s really just driving to the grocery store and soccer practice, yet has the vehicular capability of taking on a small army in any terrain on Earth. The result is a feeling of protection inside her tank-like car, and a mean case of road rage.

Turner argues the me-me-me/SUV culture more or less created a boom in road rage, “which barely existed before 1990.” This struck me as a crazy statement — but being only 7 years old in 1990, I have little reference of what it was like to drive at the time. The statement seemed like one of those short-sighted ideas we hear so often that something today is the best, worst, biggest, most outrageous that has ever been without a true comparison with history.

But I could be wrong.

Another of the show’s examples has Bart visiting the local mall, which is made up mostly of Starbucks stores. He walks into a piercing store and is warned by an employee to act fast, “because in five minutes this place becomes a Starbucks.”

I spent some time working at a mall in a Washington, D.C., suburb that had two Starbucks locations when I started. Those stores are at either end of the same wing, no more than a five-minute walk from each other. Of course, that’s a ridiculous spacing for coffee stores. Good thing they later installed a third Starbucks store, right in the middle.

A final piece of the modern consumer puzzle is the ad gimmick. In Springfield, that is best personified by DuffMan, a character who exists entirely to promote Duff beer. Turner draws a parallel to Budweiser and its early ’90s ad campaign featuring Spuds MacKenzie. We wonder sometimes why we hang onto certain items, but the moment I read that section I felt vindicated in carrying this item from house to house as I moved over the years:

God Bless America.

Culture: Reflected or Absorbed?

“The Simpsons” is a show that at certain times during its run has been criticized by many groups who say it is a bad influence. Turner draws parallels between that thread of argument and the backlash against rapper Emimen. Turner says critics who blasted Eminem’s work “implicitly argued that pop culture was not a mirror of society but [rather] its engine.”

That is, the things artists/musicians/filmmakers/writers create are not a reflection of the values/events of society, but rather the things that drive those events and define those values.

At first, I totally disagreed with that statement. But it was one of those lines I re-read, and thought about for a little while. I would argue it’s much more in the middle, a kind of give-and-take. Art reflects society, which can then shape it, and further reflect it. It’s an on-going process in which both entities feed off one another, like the Moon going around the spinning Earth as both revolve around the Sun.

Turner says one of the factors in the show’s longevity is that unlike non-animated shows, we don’t see the actors in other roles or in real life. If you watch The Office, you see the character Michael Scott. But you also see actor Steve Carrell in movies, on Access Hollywood, on Leno or maybe at Starbucks. Every character he plays carries not only his real persona, but a history of all of his other roles.

With the residents of Springfield, you would be hard-pressed to find people who actually know what the actors look like. It is only the character that we know, and “we will not get sick of seeing them hawking crap on every other TV channel, nor of reading about their on-again, off-again romances with J.Lo or their painful struggles with alcoholism. We’ll never know anything about their lavish estates in the Hollywood Hills.”

Of course, to some members of Springfield, that anonymity is a ridiculous expectation for any celebrity.

Homer: “I believe that famous people have a debt to everyone. If celebrities didn’t want people pawing through their garbage and saying their gay, they shouldn’t have tried to express themselves creatively.”

My only real beef with Turner’s work is in his recreation of a certain scene in which he left out what is one of the show’s greatest lines.

Turner is talking about the characters’ ability to go immediately from one end of the emotional spectrum to the other. In this case, Springfield has a bear sighting, and naturally the citizens are incensed that the government/police aren’t doing enough to protect them from bears. When the city creates a bear task force, and an accompanying tax to pay for it, the people are equally angry that they have to actually pay for the service they demand.

Homer (upon receiving the tax bill): “Let the bears pay the bear tax! I already pay the Homer tax!”
Lisa: “Dad, that’s the home-owner tax.”

Homer is by far the most popular character, perhaps because of his logic skills. For me, he’s got nothing on the comedic genius that is Milhouse Van Houten.

And yes, I did write this entry while drinking out of a Simpsons cup:

December 31, 2010 books Simpsons Uncategorized