The JackB

"When you're in jail, a good friend will be trying to bail you out. A best friend will be in the cell next to you saying, 'Damn, that was fun'." Groucho Marx

Archives for September 2010

I May Be in Your Vacation Photos

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I am a bit puckish in nature. I love silly tricks, slapstick comedy and all sorts of goofy stuff. Some might even say that I have a bit of a twisted sense of humor.

In my younger years I went through a phase in which I thought that it was great fun to surreptitiously place myself in the background of pictures and home videos. It was a game in which my friends and I would try to see who could end up in the most. We had to use the honor system as it was virtually impossible to verify who was the actual winner.

There was one basic rule to this game. We avoided wedding, funeral, Bar-Mitzvah or similar type occasion photos.

The game was a lot of fun and lent itself to some memorable moments. Back in 1988 I was in Georgetown visiting a friend when we decided to go to see the Washington Monument. While we were there I decided that there was no better moment than the present to try out my hand as a tour guide.

So I spent a few minutes searching for a good target and identified a family of four. Dad was busy videotaping the kids and mom at the monument. Having determined that they were a good candidate I took a deep breath and walked right into the middle of the shoot and introduced myself as a member of the Monument Mounties or something like that (my memory is a little rough) and welcomed them to D.C.

I then spent a few minutes providing them with interesting facts about the monument. They played along or maybe they bought into it, who knows.

All I know is that somewhere there is footage of a 19 year-old kid with a flat top haircut, a blue tank top, shorts, sunglasses and fanny pack giving this family a great welcome to our nation’s capital. Later on I did the same thing at the Capitol, The Smithsonian and near the White House.

Since then I have managed to travel around most of the US, parts of Mexico, Europe, Canada and the Middle East. One of my silly claims to fame is that having played the game on multiple continents and more than one island.

So the next time you look at photos of your last vacation, business trip or adventure take a look in the background and see if there is a semitic looking man smiling and/or waving at you. You just might have proof of my having won the game, or maybe not.

(yep, it is a recycled post but done so with a purpose)

Who I Am Now Is Not Who I Was- Atonement

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Yom Kippur begins tomorrow night and I am at a loss because who I am now is not who I was. That is the sort of cryptic, new agey comment that I hate. I look at it and say what the fuck does that mean. It is gibberish and not the authentic frontier gibberish that they used in Blazing Saddles.

When I asked Scary Mommy if she was interested in a guest post she said yes and asked me to provide a short biography. Here is what I shared there:

The Jack B. is a writer and author of 39 unpublished books and three screenplays. A former athlete and would be superhero he still fights for truth, justice and the American Way. Though he may look like a grown man, don’t fool yourself he is still a boy at heart. When he is not engaged in Walter Mitty like fantasies he is a husband, father and friend and blogs at Random Thoughts.

Some of that is true and some of that is what I want to be true. I am not going to bother providing you with the details of what is what- read it and decide for yourself what is or isn’t. And for the last time, my real name is not Jack. Call it a pen name, a pseudonym or whatever the hell you want to it really doesn’t matter to me. Way back in the ice age when I launched this beast I called a blog I wanted complete anonymity. It suited my needs and purpose.

Now the need for anonymity is less clear and I have become semi-anonymous and for the moment that suits me too.

If it isn’t clear by the tone and tenor of this piece I am angry, incensed, irritated, disconcerted and discombobulated by a few things. The shit has hit the fan and I am busy wiping chunks of it off of my face and the surrounding walls.

Some of it can be attributed to me. I take responsibility for those things. I hold myself accountable and that is part of my anger and frustration because the buck stops with me. But, that doesn’t prevent me from seeing the bigger picture. That doesn’t prevent me from being aware of what was outside of my control and the role those things played in this particular play.

So on the eve of the day of atonement I find myself wearing what my son used to call my angry face. It is like a freaking Halloween mask that has been glued to my face. As I walked through the mall people who caught my eye moved away from me. They made room and I walked on by as if I was Moses splitting the Red Sea. Walked on by and headed to my vehicle because I needed to hit the gym. Walked on by because I knew that time with the weights, heavy bag and steam room would help.

And it did. The endorphin release brought blessed relief and moments of clarity. In the land of Hollywood it would be great to say that this moment of clarity led to the happy ending- but it didn’t. It didn’t because the challenges we face in life aren’t solved in 90 minutes.

Instead it confirmed for me that the path I have chosen may be rocky and uneven but I am getting closer to the finish line all the time. The solutions that I seek are coming. Some have been implemented and I see the fruits of my labor. Some of it is less clear, but I am doing what I can to make it happen.

Part of my frustration stems from my dreams and expectations. Who I once was never would have expected to see me doing what I do now. Some of that is because he was young and naive and some because he wasn’t as worn out.

But he also wasn’t as tough. He couldn’t have written these posts and admitted how hard it has been. He couldn’t have looked in the mirror and accepted what was fed and forced upon him. So while I may say that who I am now is not who I was it is also not who I will be.

This challenge is a moment in time, a blip that may make life more irritating but cannot last. Things will turn and the sunshine will warm both my back and my face again.

So on the eve of the day of atonement I ask myself if I am ready to speak with someone who has been silent for far too long. I ask because I don’t know if I am. I ask because I am furious and the fire burns as brightly as it ever has, even if the oxygen seems to have been cut off.

And in truth I wonder about this strictly because of signs. I ask because the universe is playing and I can’t figure out if what I see is random happenstance or something else. But something tells me that I am going to find out.

Morning Notes and Music

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In about ten minutes the dog and I are off to the vet. I feel badly, dude is about to get neutered. Not that it matters, but old Jack refuses to get snipped. Not now, not ever.

Made a few adjustments here. Been collecting all of my fiction and placing it under the Fragments of Fiction tab.

New posts coming when I return.

Don’t Change On Me– Alan Jackson
Don’t Change On Me-Ray Charles
If You Were Mine– Ray Charles
You’re Gonna Go, Far Kid– The Offspring
I am The Walrus– The Beatles
Space Oddity– David Bowie
Just Another Day– Oingo Boingo

Dad Doesn’t Have a Crotch

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I was more than a little dismayed to hear my daughter tell me that I don’t have a crotch. So I immediately jammed my hand into my pants to confirm that all parts were intact and located in the appropriate places. Normally I wouldn’t do such a thing. I’d simply look down and know that the dark haired beauty was trying to play a trick on me.

But, it is disconcerting to be told that such an important part of my body was missing and since I had taken a nap earlier that day I thought it was prudent to confirm that Lorena Bobbitt had not visited my home. Upon my verification that all parts were working and accounted for I looked the little girl in the eye and said that she was mistaken.

She shook her head at me and explained that I can’t have a crotch because I am a boy. I told her that gender didn’t matter and she shook her head again. A moment later she pointed at her brother and myself and that said that we can’t have a crotch because we were blessed with a penis.

 Side note: She didn’t say blessed but that is because she doesn’t understand that it is a blessing. Come to think of it, had she referred to having one as a blessing I would have shipped her off to a castle and surrounded it a team of  Navy Seals.  And any boy that approached her would have learned that my presence is synonymous with death.

Fortunately she did not say so and the first grade boys aren’t going to have to smear lamb’s blood upon the door frames of their rooms to avoid being visited by yours truly. I am not even close to being ready for her to start dating yet, but I digress.

You may be wondering why the dark haired beauty saw fit to talk about crotches and my lack of one. Well, the answer is that she and her mother read a book about babies. The very same book that was used after the We Aren’t Chickens! A Child Questions Reproduction discussion from this past spring.

So mother and daughter sat on the couch bonding while learning about reproduction. As they were reading her brother suddenly shouted that he would never stick his penis in a woman’s crotch because he thinks it is disgusting. I think that when he made his proclamation I fell off of my chair laughing.

He and I have had this discussion before, but it is not a priority for him. Until relatively recently he thought that girls were relatively useless. They didn’t like to play the same games he did and and they were good at wreaking havoc in his life. That attitude may be changing a bit as he asked, “Dad, Can You Teach me About Girls.”

Anyhoo in the manual for how to raise a boy it specifically says that you should never laugh when your son says that he won’t have any interest in reproduction- guess I must have slept through that chapter. Whoops.

So this brings us almost to the present. After I picked myself up and reapplied the daddy poker face I looked at my son and said that he didn’t need to worry about it now. There would be plenty of time to worry about this later. And since he is my child he made a point of asking me to explain why I said that.

I said that it is good to enjoy being a kid and that we should all keep our crotches covered and private. This of course is what led to the dark haired beauty’s lecture about boys not having a crotch. It also led to more questions from her about “spatial” concerns as to what fits where and how it works. Perfectly innocent questions from the six year-old but still a bit disconcerting for dear old dad who is not interested in providing the sort of detailed answers she was looking for.

Midway through it all her older brother looked at me and said that he thought that he was old enough to know these things and that he wanted to know how many times you need to do it to get pregnant. I paused for a second and he told me that he knew that to be good at things it was important to practice and that is why he was asking.

For a moment I could see an older version of him in college explaining that he needed a study partner to help him practice so that he didn’t flunk Reproduction 100. Common sense won the day and I did not share this image with him. But I did tell him that some things were better left unknown and that he really didn’t want to know what happened with his mother and I. He told me again that he thought that was old enough and I asked him to trust me when I said that he really didn’t want to know.

He agreed as opposed to his sister who still insists that boys don’t have crotches. Something tells me that one day they will be thrilled to learn that stories like this have been immortalized here, but that is a story for a different day.

If you are interested in reading about some other discussions with my kids take a moment to look at Conversations With The Kids and you’ll find links to other posts that are related to this.

Dear Angry Blogger

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Dear Angry Bloggers,

Consider this an open letter to any blogger who is unhappy with the way that they are being treated by brands and or PR agencies. As I mentioned in the silly video above I am a bit confused by your anger and I wonder if your outrage is real or manufactured.

We are going to operate based upon the assumption that none of us are being forced to blog. Of course in the age of reality television when someone like Kate Gosselin is famous it is entirely possible that I am wrong about this. It is possible that some man has a gun pointed at your head and is insisting that you blog about how proud you are that your son can now poop in the potty or why that one night in college is so memorable.

For most of us this is not the case and our time at the keyboard is entirely of our own choosing. And choice is the operative word here because we all have a choice as to whether we wish to work with PR agencies/brands. If we don’t like the terms that are being offered we can try to negotiate better terms or simply say no.

There is a lot of power in that word, no. Use it wisely and you’ll often find that you receive better terms but that is the topic for a different post. So let’s circle back here for a moment and talk for a moment about what is going on.

A business who wishes to use your blog for ads/sponsorship is doing so because they think that you will help reach prospective customers. This is all about the eyeballs. They want to be targeted and to reach as many of those eyeballs for as little as possible.

Your job as a content provider is to provide proof that you reach those eyeballs. If you can do that you have some leverage to work with. If you can’t prove it than you have to find a way to convince them to throw you a bone and then you have to hope that the campaign performs well enough for them to want to return.

But you face multiple challenges here. Many of you are playing a game where you do not know or understand the rules. You aren’t able to approach these prospective sponsors with the degree of professionalism that you really want to have. Learn their language, find out what sort of terms they use to talk shop and you earn some more credibility. That is not a guarantee that they will work with you either, but it helps.

It helps because you want to make a case for your blog to be included. It helps because you want them to be able to justify your inclusion to whomever it is they report to. Don’t be fooled, someone is looking at metrics here. Someone is spending time looking at the ROI of a campaign. Help them by making it easy for them to understand why you should be included.

But again, that is touching upon material for a separate post. What we are really focusing upon here is the nonsense that is being spewed by bloggers who feel like they are being mistreated. You will receive emails with multiple mistakes. Perhaps they misspelled your name or made it clear that they haven’t read your blog. That is silly and unprofessional on the part of the sender, but it doesn’t really require a 800 word post on how you are being mistreated.

Delete it and move on.

The reality is that you are operating in a crowded field with a low barrier to entry. If you don’t like how you are being treated get out or find a way to distinguish yourself from the crowd. It is not easy but it is not impossible either.