Six Word Memoir
UPDATE: So many great ideas, it’s hard to pick just one six-word memoir. I think I should have six six-word memoirs, that should be a thing. There is one that has become my favorite because it makes me laugh out loud, and it also captures a little bit of that “I am unable or unwilling to be a grown-up and have a real job” feeling. “For sale: adult shoes, never worn.” It’s a reference to Hemingway’s six-word story, “For sale: baby shoes, never worn” (which may or may not be real but is famous anyway). It was submitted by Tim Canny, who, if he will email me a mailing address, will receive a free DVD from me. Thanks everyone for thinking on it, this was a lot of fun.
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The coffee shop I frequent here in Brooklyn is filled with lots of other people who are, like me, using it as an office. I can’t imagine the work that everyone else is doing is quite as important as my own work, which is mostly avoiding the OTHER work that I have to do, but they all seem pretty busy. There is one person in particular who is always there before I arrive and after I leave, and who does not seem to be merely reloading Twitter every couple of minutes. In fact he is working on his media empire: you may know it as SmithMag, and that might be because you have heard of the Six Word Memoir. This fellow and I – let’s call him “Larry Smith” – Larry Smith and I were talking about the Six Word Memoir and he suggested I contribute one for his book about same. Let me tell you, it’s hard. Just take a look at the ones that people have submitted, some of them are sort of brilliant. In its perfect form, it’s kind of like the punchline of a joke, where something very small and specific suddenly expands in your mind to sum up a life story. OK, now do that for your own life. Actually, stop, do it for mine instead.
I asked Twitter to help me out on this and got some great responses. From a quick scan, here are some of my favorites:
@meaghano: Sorry didn’t get to this sooner.
@awryone: Should have left that pimple alone.
@mehuman: Already peaked with song from portal.
@petersagal: Vanished after failing as IT professional.
@aaronfever: I need someone to work merchandise.
@colleenky: Should not be trusted with cats.
@paulandstorm: Paul and Storm just won’t leave. (Note how even MY six word memoir is somehow ABOUT THEM.)
@unmodisch: Internet pioneer, domesticated money-pooping cow.
also @paulandstorm: Dear Internet: thanks for…well, everything.
@marmotry: Liked cold baths with Angela Lansbury.
also @unmodisch: Phase one: music. Phase three: profit!
@scottknaster: Couldn’t write own six word memoir.
And they continue to trickle in. Boy do I love the hive mind! Since I don’t want the blog readers who are not on Twitter to miss out on the fun, I’ll take suggestions here in the comments as well. A couple of things I didn’t know until I started getting suggestions: I probably will avoid using my own lyrics for this, and ideally this will not be about me being dead. Though it’s only six words, it would be nice to somehow capture the collaborative nature of my rise to online semi-celebrity, by which I mean that while I owe the internet plenty already, it would be fun and appropriate if you also did this work for me. By Tuesday.
OK, back to tweeting about sandwiches and pretending to be on vacation.
Summer Vacation
My daughter just had her last day of school for the year, and I can’t understand why she’s not terribly sad about it. I’m sad about it, and I don’t even GO to preschool. There’s something about school that will always make me feel a little melancholy I guess – a school year is such a discrete thing, a big chunk of life behind you that will never come again. I can already imagine the hazy memory 08-09 will become for her, just a couple of snapshots really: that time they made macaroni necklaces, that friend she had who moved to another school, the one kid who was always peeing his pants. Obviously this is my baggage not hers, and it has a lot to do with having a child who’s growing up in front of my eyes, but I also think I’m identifying with the end of the school year because I’m taking something of a Summer vacation myself.
NO TOURING. That is the rule for the next couple of months. I really do enjoy playing for all of you, much more than I ever thought I would. But the airplanes and hotels and suitcases are a real drag, and it’s the closest thing to actual “work” I ever get in this ridiculous career. And it chops up my personal and professional life; I’m always either on a trip, getting ready for one, or recovering from one. So I’m going to defrag a little, recharge, waste some time, play guitar for no reason at all, mess around with various bits of hardware and software that I’ve purchased but never used, see what happens.
Merlin Mann gave a great talk at MaxFunCon about creativity, specifically about that pesky “getting started” part of it. It’s the thing I was trying to defeat when I started Thing a Week, and while I had it on the ropes for a while, it was just a temporary victory. I still struggle with it, and I suspect I always will. I can use the traveling as an excuse, but if it wasn’t traveling it would be groceries, or Xbox or whatever (Marble Blast Ultra, seriously, I am getting my ass kicked by a bunch of 13-year-olds, but I dig it). I can always find distractions that seem like higher priorities than making stuff. So part of my goal for this Summer is to take as much pressure off as I can and pry apart some space for doing just that. I’m not promising to write you a bunch of songs exactly, in fact I kind of have to keep my goals a little fuzzier than that in order to not frighten the muse away. I don’t know exactly where I’m going or what I’m working towards, and I forgive myself in advance for that because that’s sort of the point. I’m just hoping to have some fun making music in the privacy of my own head for a while. Maybe you can hear it when I’m done (whatever it turns out to be).
In the meantime, I am JoCo4Realz on Xbox Live and I will see you in Sprawl emmer effers!
Rifftrax Presents: Tron (featuring me and Paul and Storm)
I am a long time fan of Mystery Science Theater 3000, a television show in which a human and his robot friends watch movies and make fun of them (it maybe is not a surprise to you that I like this sort of thing). Mike Nelson, Kevin Murphy and Bill Corbett, formerly of said show, now do this thing called Rifftrax – sort of an alternate audio track for movies that you can sync up as you watch, MST3K roll-your-own style. Imagine my delight when they invited me and Paul and Storm to record one of these for the movie TRON. I’ll wait while you imagine. Did you imagine me jumping up and down and peeing my pants? Because that’s what happened.
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DVD For Sale
At long last, here it is.
A live DVD/CD super combo package, now available to you, the general public. It’s currently in pre-sales but discs will ship May 15th, and if you buy now you can download the mp3s immediately.
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