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 March 2014

What You Need & What You Want

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What's in my bag?-8
This is not Felix’s Magic Bag Of Tricks

It is not an exaggeration to say that we come from different worlds. He is a single man from the Congo and I am a father from Los Angeles. We are standing next to each other watching children swim and just talking about life.

He has a fantastic accent that is melodious and full of life. He tells me that he loves the spirit of the children here and I smile. He is talking about all of the kids at the party but he is pointing to my daughter.

We’re almost 9,000 miles from his home. The equator runs through the village he grew up in. You can wear a t-shirt and shorts year round. I am not 9,000 miles from home. We’re miles away from the home I grew up in. I can walk down the main streets and provide you with forty years of background.

He speaks seven languages. I am humbled by that. I grew up in a house where language was important. I am a Peace Corps baby. My folks met in Ecuador. When we were kids if my parents wanted to have a private conversation they spoke Spanish. We all picked up on it. I learned how to read/write speak Hebrew, but the truth is that my Hebrew has gotten pretty rough.

He speaks seven languages, but I can curse in 12. That counts for something but I am not sure what. ( Needs/Wants)

++++++

Early afternoon on a Friday and The Lumineers are singing Ho Hey and I am smiling, thinking about how much of this song makes sense to me.

Thinking about life in Los Angeles and life in Texas, thinking about what it is I want and what it is I need. Two years ago the man in the story and shared a very pleasant moment and laughed in the most genuine way people do when they are truly happy.

It wasn’t a courtesy laugh or imagined humor. We didn’t smile to be polite or courteous because we didn’t have to. We just got along and enjoyed the ease that comes when you connect naturally with someone else.

Got a million thoughts floating through my head about how to be the best father and the best man I can be. Got a million thoughts about making sure we…I understand the difference between what we want and what we need because it is important.

It is meaningful, significant and critical.

“Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.”
― Dylan Thomas, Do Not Go Gentle Into That Good Night

I am thinking about this because I have been here before. I have been the watcher that stood by and witnessed someone else slip away. Seen people I love move through this world and slide into another place, heading off to where ever it is we go after we are here.

We buried ‘D.’

Not the men that work at the cemetery but his friends, the people who loved him and who would have done whatever we could to have helped him hang on longer.

We did it because there wasn’t anything else we could do and we were desperate to give some comfort to his family and so we took off our jackets and grabbed the shovels hoping that it would somehow ease their pain in some way.

I remember those endless blue skies and so much more. It was an August day that seared itself into my soul and it changed me or maybe it is more fitting to see the entire experience changed me.

There is the me who lived before it all and the me that came after.

One knew that bad things, inexplicable things could happen but he never really expected to see them and the other, well he lived through a few so he knew things.

Rage, rage against the dying of the light

When you have seen some of these things and traveled along the twilight roads you make choices about how you want to be and what you want to do.

You figure out what is important and you do things to hold onto it knowing you will never have or keep it all the way it is for as long as you want.

It is ok because along those twilight roads you can also learn how to just roll with what comes along and that gives you stability and strength to bend but not break and to accept the changes that come.

But that doesn’t mean you don’t stand up for what is important and you don’t fight to keep those safe and close.

“Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

Golden slumbers fill your eyes
Smiles awake you when you rise
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby

Once there was a way to get back homeward
Once there was a way to get back home
Sleep pretty darling do not cry
And I will sing a lullaby”

Golden Slumbers- The Beatles

A Picture Is Worth More Than A 1000 Words

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Foreplay

Sometimes I listen to people try to tell a joke and I wonder if it would be rude to stop them and suggest they practice telling it a few times before trying it out on people.

Blame the thought on an old colleague of mine whose lack of confidence in his joke telling skills made him rush to hit the punchline in a way that always made me think of premature ejaculation.

Not literally, it didn’t resemble it in the literal sense but from a figurative perspective it worked. Because the guy would pump that sucker out so quickly he didn’t give you time to understand the background of the joke so by the time that punchline hit you didn’t always understand why it was funny.

No one really wants a courtesy laugh either. If you tell a joke you want people to give you a real smile and belly laugh.

A Picture Is Worth More Than A 1000 Words

If you sift through the blog you’ll find more than one post where I talk about trying to find a way to show you the movies in my head. If there is one goal that is shared throughout every post, that is it. It is always about trying to paint a picture with words and it is why The Great Pinterest Experiment of 2012 Meets Gladiator came about.

The Shmata Queen likes to try and tease me about being on a social media platform for girls, but Pinterest Forced Me To Change How I Blog and I am grateful.

When I decided I wanted to monetize the blog I had to take a hard look at how and why to do it. A big part of making that happen was to find ways to increase the number of readers here because advertising and sponsorship opportunities follow eyeballs.

It made sense to me to try and leverage the power of Pinterest and the only way to do so was to make sure that every post contained an image in it. Look back on older posts and you’ll find plenty that don’t have a picture and now they look naked to me.

But when I really thought about making a point to include pictures in every post it made sense to me to do so because a good picture enhances the post. It helps flesh out the mental image I try to paint inside your head and it helps me try to become a better story teller.

Understanding

When I help my children with their English assignments we talk about telling the story we want to tell and how to do it.  When their teachers ask them to write an essay about XYZ they aren’t just looking for a paper that is grammatically correct and free of errors.

They want their students to demonstrate understanding and command of the topic. When we talk about telling the story you want to tell it is about meeting the charge in an appropriate way that not only answers the question but does so in their voice.

Meaning I want them to show they understood it well enough to tell the story in their words and their voice. Don’t just regurgitate what you read. Paint a picture.

How Do You Paint A Picture- Become A Better Story Teller

Confession: I am jammed for time now and am using a veteran blogging trick to help finish this post. Just below this ‘graph you’ll find Filmmaker Andrew Stanton (“Toy Story,” “WALL-E”) Ted Talk about story telling.

I have watched it several times and really like it. There are some great tips in it that you can use for writing/blogging and story telling in general.

How To Write A Blog Post That Will Make You A Sex God Or Goddess

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What's important?

Editor’s Note: Most of this post originally appeared here but since there are so many new readers I decided it was worth  sharing it again with you. It is not because easy choices lead to hard decisions or because I want you to read about Buck either. But time is of the essence and my mission won’t wait so I’ll have to ask you to come back later to see more.

In the interim enjoy the words below.

Someone asked me how to write a post in five minutes but I was feeling a bit saucy so I used a headline that some might call linkbait. On the other hand every good headline should have an element of linkbait in it.

Or maybe what we are really saying is linkbait is a pejorative term when the post it directs you to has no redeeming value for the reader. I don’t have time to mull that over with you now.

So instead let’s talk about you can write a post in five minutes. Maybe you provide Twenty-Five Links That Will Make You A Better Writer/Blogger and include links to older posts that newer readers might have missed like:

Between those posts you might help people recognize that you are someone who covers multiple topics because writing should be fun and Blogging Doesn’t Have To Have A Point.

Maybe you should keep sharing links to help breathe life into some older posts:

Or maybe you should wait until you have more than five minutes to blog.

What do you think?

That Bossy Woman Needs To Stop Leaning In

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Zoo Parc Beauval

I miss the good old days of the Wild West when you could solve road rage by knocking out a horse. Being a competitive sort of fellow I climbed into the lion pit at the zoo and gave the poor guy in the picture above a hard left and look what happened.

Since I am right handed you can only imagine what would have happened if I had given Leo a taste of five fingers of fury…would have been ugly.

I imagine since the Internet is filled with smart and righteous people someone is dialing PETA right now to express their outrage at Jack the Dad Blogger who so cavalierly talks about beating up a 500-pound beast.

All I have to say to them is you ought to try wearing these vajamas. Yeah, that is a hell of an idea. Let’s describe them as being Vagisoft and because we believe in equality let’s create something more masculine.

Let’s make the Penijamas and describe them as being quite durable. “You’ll have your Penijamas for years because they are as hard as a rock.

The Shmata Queen just snorted her tea straight through her nose. All apologies to my queen, it is hard to be dignified when tea shoots out of your nose, of course it is hard to be dignified when anything shoots out of you.

That is one of G-d’s jokes upon man– if it shoots from a person you guarantee they’re making the kind of face they never want to see immortalized in pictures.

Be The Bigger Man

You might wonder if the subhead is going to lead us into some sort of size joke but I am here to assure you it is not. There won’t be any comments about the emails we receive that promise us pills that will turn me/you an or your man into someone nicknamed Tripod.

No, I am about to tell you about a conversation I had with my son about the importance of being the bigger man. That kid o’mine is locked in the midst of middle school and some of the things kids do are just nasty.

So we talk about being the bigger man, learning when to stand up for ourselves, when to ignore, when to glare and when to use his own five fingers of fury. Don’t mess with a Steiner because we come in pairs and it is not because we are schizophrenic. “Yes, we are! No we are not! Shut Up!

Anyhoo the young master and I have been talking daily about some of the antics of his so-called friends and why people act like idiots.

Today I told him about a dear friend of mine who has a very close friend that I can’t stand. I try to be very honest with my son but I couldn’t tell him that I want to give this other guy a box of Ex-Lax brownies and then steal all of the toilet paper from every bathroom within 18 miles because I wouldn’t be the bigger man.

But I couldn’t not tell you fine folks about that particular dream.

And I can tell you quite honestly that even though I find this man to be as endearing as the tag on my underwear I tend to just ignore him because our mutual friend likes him and it is not my place to tell him who to be friends with.

That makes as much sense to me as trying to ban a word that hurts a group of people at the expense of a group of others.

A Comment About Facebook

My brother posted this on his Facebook account and I thought I’d share it with you:

A recent study conducted by the Fouker Institute proved that 3 out of 5 dentists recommend Trident and 19 out of 3 billion people allow Facebook status updates to change their political/religious views.

Have I ever mentioned that guy is an insouciant pain-in-my-ass but I love him anyway.

And now I have to leave you because a spontaneous dance party just broke out here. I’ll see you in the comments. Go on now, dance or comment or do both.

How 69 Drunk Bloggers Made More Money Than You

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mystical moods!

“Apparently my dream date has graduated from the St. Bernard School of Open Mouth Kissing. I stand there in shock trying to figure out if she thinks that my face is made of chocolate or peanut butter. The Mistress Of Tongue

Confession I was going to go a different direction with this post. I was going to share a letter to the universe and tell you what I learned and then I was going to tie it into the six posts in the bullet points below:

But I changed my mind. Read my words and bored myself silly so I decided to revisit the graduate of the St. Bernard School of Open Mouth Kissing and maybe even tell you about the girl with sandpaper hands who didn’t understand you can’t milk a man the same way you milk a cow.

Really, I was going to but I only had one drink this St. Patty’s Day and I am still traumatized so I hesitate to go there. Blame it on my fragile male ego, I have a handshake that gorillas are jealous of but that sandpaper woman was gifted with a hybrid version of Edward Scissorhands and a monkey wrench.

Oh the horror of it all.

How 69 Drunk Bloggers Made More Money Than You

Do you really want to know how 69 drunk bloggers made more money than you because I can give you an answer. But before we go there let’s take a moment to talk about earthquakes and 100 year-old grandparents.

My grandfather would have turned 100 on Monday March 17, 2014. Since he died of a broken heart I have no doubt that had circumstances been different he and I would have celebrated.

But grandma died and after 76 years of marriage and 85 years of friendship he wasn’t up for hanging around.

I knocked on his casket at the funeral and told him if he knocked 3 times I would pull him out of there.

Why?

Because he was claustrophobic and since I loved my grandfather my promise was an easy way to ease his mind and give him one less thing to worry about.

Don’t Call It A Shamrock Shake

Monday morning started with a bang and a whole lot of shaking.  Mother Nature blessed up with an earthquake. I asked her to stop it but she ignored me and to prove a point she kept sending more quakes throughout the day.

I wanted to lean in and tell that bossy woman she is one crazy bitch but I was afraid she would think I told her to relax and or called her hysterical.

Not unlike many men I have learned women don’t respond well to that so it is best to find other w0rds. Still I admit I was a bit irritated. A year ago I walked back into my apartment in Fort Worth and was about to jump into the shower when I found out we had a tornado warning.

For three hours I sat in my sweaty workout gear because I was worried about what would happen if the tornado caught me in the shower.

I told Mother Nature it wasn’t cool to behave that way but I guess she remembered that I said I prefer earthquakes to tornadoes because quakes come without warning. You don’t get to watch them on television and wonder if they’ll come visit or not.

Quakes either ignore you or they come kick down your door and say hi.

What About The 69 Drunk Bloggers?

If I was like some of those 69 drunk bloggers I would give you a link now to a free ebook for you to download. That ebook would consist of several of my most popular posts and would include a link to my class, the one you have to pay for.

And you’d pay $50 or $60 bucks a pop so that I could tell about providing great content that is relevant and interesting to you. And then you’d get a pitch to shell out some more cash to be a part of a small and select group of individuals who are learning how to recreate my fail proof system for blogging success.

I don’t know about you but I think it would be much more interesting to talk about how those writing groups and stories I mentioned above helped me become a better writer, gain more freelance writing jobs and realize how much joy writing brings to me.

But since it is late and the bed is calling my name I’ll share one more piece of advice and say goodnight: “Don’t take it so seriously. Have fun with blogging and it will come out in your writing. That is a good thing. Your readers will recognize it, appreciate it and want to be a part of it.

What do you think?