Workman's Waste of Time

RING TONE DEAF

2011-05-20T00:08:00.001-07:00

I heard Jon Stewart say something funny today and I thought it would make a good ringtone. So here it is:

http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Daily_2.mp3

Contractual Obligation

2011-04-23T20:10:00.000-07:00

You win, Grandparents (and Patti), we had an Easter egg hunt, and we made a video of it, and now you're posting it here. I don't know how long it's interesting to watch a video of children looking for plastic eggs, but I'm pretty sure it's not nearly as long as this video. So for the rest of you, you're excused from watching this. If you're a grandparent, here's your red meat...

ONE MORE MORE TRY

2011-03-15T11:16:00.000-07:00

A month or two ago, I was waxing nostalgic for an old George Michael tune. Apparently, Iron And Wine were, too. Here's what they did with it...

Iron And Wine covers George Michael

EXIT STAGE RIGHT, PLEASE

2011-02-10T22:45:00.000-08:00

Back in the ‘90s, I used to perform with a sketch troupe and we had a regular gig at the Comedy Store on Sunset. During that time, we saw a lot of bad comedy. Some of the worst came from an improv troupe called “At the Drop of a Hat.” They were a bunch of middle aged people who did unfunny improv while accompanied by an on-stage cellist. (To his credit, the cellist was actually pretty good.)

One week, they got the call to perform at the Comedy Store’s La Jolla venue. It was kind of a big deal to get invited to La Jolla. You got a free meal and could stay the night in Mitzi Shore’s condo on the ocean at Pacific Beach. Naturally, my troupe was wildly jealous and wished “At the Drop of a Hat” ill as they headed south on the 405 freeway.

We got our wish.

A few minutes into their performance, someone on stage made some crack about SDSU that didn’t go over well with the crowd. So someone out there in the darkness just said, in a dispassionate tone, “boo.” He didn’t yell it or draw out the “o” so he was actually booing the group, he just said “boo.”

A few seconds later, someone else said it. “Boo.”

More and more people started in, and before long, people were actually booing “At the Drop of a Hat.” It started in the middle of the room, and spread out the edges. Pretty soon, it was loud, “booooooooooo!”

It was at this point that someone in “At the Drop of a Hat” actually thought he could retake the situation. He smiled and laughed and said, “Ok, I get it. ‘Boo.’ Now, someone give me a location where two strangers might meet…”

“BOOOOOOOOOO!”

It wasn’t going to work. The audience had gotten a taste of their own power, and they wouldn’t be satisfied until “At the Drop of a Hat” walked off the stage in shame.

About four minutes later, the battle was over. The humiliated comedians walked off the stage, through the hostile crowd, and out the door, to the thunderous cheers of the audience. (The La Jolla Comedy Store has no back exit, making their walk of shame all the more terrible.)

So this afternoon I’m watching the news from Egypt on Al Jazeera English (fine, put me on the “do not fly” list, those guys have covered this story better than anyone else) and I thought of “At the Drop of a Hat.”

On one side of the screen was Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak, addressing his nation. On the other side, a live shot of protesters in Ciaro. At first, the protesters were silent, watching the speech on TVs set up around the square.

Mubarak starts by telling people how great he is and how much good he has done for Egypt. But after a few minutes, it becomes clear that he’s not going anywhere. He’s not going to resign. Instead, he’s talking about a constitutional committee he’s set up to produce reforms and talking about how he was wild and impetuous as a young man.

Somewhere among the protesters in Ciaro, someone took off his shoe and held it over his head, a sign of great disrespect. Pretty soon, others were doing the same. By the time Mubarak repeated that he would not step down before his term ended in September, the people in the crowd were shaking their fists and chanting something like, “he must go now.”

Is it possible the president of Egypt has even less skill in reading crowds than the worst improv comedy group in LA? Apparently so. To an outside observer, it’s hard to believe just how wrong he got this.

But make no mistake, the audience has gotten sense of their own power, and they won’t be satisfied until the performer leaves the stage.

(Note to Mubarak… who certainly reads this blog and is frustrated that I don’t post here enough: get onto Wikipedia and look up Nicolae Ceauşescu. These things don’t end well for people in your situation. Get your luxury flat in Dubai and get the hell out. The alternative for you is much, much worse.)

ON THE RADIO, TODAY!

2011-02-07T11:01:00.000-08:00

Today's "The Story with Dick Gordon" features an interview with me about my love of some far-distant islands and the origins of the Faroe Islands Podcast.

The show airs in the United States on public radio stations and broadcast times can vary from city to city. So you can check here to see when (or if) the show is airing in your town.

No luck? Never fear. The interview is online here:

http://thestory.org/archive/the_story_020711_b.mp3/view

MUSICAL MEMORIES: GEORGE MICHAEL

2011-01-16T00:32:00.000-08:00

The part of me that wishes I was cool doesn’t want to feel any resonance with this particular artist. But tonight I must grudgingly admit that a few of his songs have played a role in my life.

It started innocently enough tonight as I logged into iTunes. A few shameful music purchases have caused the good people at Apple to believe that I want a lot of cheesy 80s music in my life. So there in the “recommended” list was “Faith” by George Michael. My mind was cast back to my late teens when my older sister owned this album and we gleefully danced to “I Want Your Sex” with the idea that it would shock our parents. (I have no idea of this was successful or not, but if it was my parents lever let on.)

So, just for old time’s sake, I click on the link. But the song I decide to preview isn’t the one of the popular songs. Instead, I click on is the rather sappy and overwrought ballad, “One More Try.” In the 90 seconds you can get for free, I am immediately transported to an exact moment in my teenage life.

I’m on a United Airlines 727 headed from Salt Lake City to Chicago, O’Hare. In Chicago, I’ll change planes and continue my journey home to Rochester. But now, I’m just burrowing into my seat and putting a cassette into my Walkman to help me pass the time.

As I listen to music and look out the window, I think about the past four months. I was away at school in Idaho. My first time living away from home. While Southeastern Idaho didn’t agree with me at all, it did have one thing going for it: an astounding male to female ratio… something like 1:4. As a result, even a socially inept person like me could have a pretty thriving dating life. And, improbable as it was, I actually had a girlfriend; my first ever.

Her name was Barbara and we kissed amid giant snowflakes as they slowly fell on a cold Rexburg night. It was my first kiss and, corny as it might sound, it was kinda magical. She was from Boulder City, Nevada, the daughter of a florist, and 21. That’s right, an older woman. For whatever reason, she took a liking to a terrifyingly skinny guy from upstate New York. So we started going out. It wasn’t the most mature relationship in the world, consisting mostly of making out and going to movies, but for teenage first-love*, it was pretty good. (*Or whatever it is when you’re a teenager. I think “love” in the sense adults know it is maybe a bit too strong, but “like” isn’t strong enough, and “lust” doesn’t really work either as it neglects the fact that there was a genuine and rather sweet affection to be found in the relationship.)

But the semester ended and we prepared to go our separate ways. I was a few weeks shy of 19, meaning I would soon leave for a 2 year Mormon mission. Barbara would head home for the summer, and then back to school in Idaho in the fall. It’s custom for girlfriends to say they’ll wait for their boyfriend to return from serving a mission. It’s also custom for that vow to be broken after about a year or so. I suggested that we not even go through that charade and just leave things on good terms and commit to look each other up in two years if she hadn’t gotten involved with anyone else. I remember that rather practical and realistic suggestion was not greeted with much enthusiasm.

So, without any real game plan for the future, she got into a car and headed back to Nevada. Someone standing with me asked, “so, is your little heart just a’ breakin’?” (She was from Oklahoma.) I was actually a bit annoyed at the suggestion. After all, I was striving to be an unemotional person boldly looking to the future, not the past.

A few hours later, my grandfather picks me up and drives me to down to Salt Lake, where I board a flight for home. And the tape I’ve got in my Walkman is a copy of “Faith” I copied off my sister. I go through the first three tracks which include the infamous, “I Want Your Sex” and am confronted with “One More Try.”

I’m not paying that much attention to the song, so I don’t really know what it’s about, but it’s slow and kind of sad sounding and affects me in a way I’m not quite prepared for. After a minute or so, I notice I’m starting to tear up a bit, so I reach into my pocket and throw on a pair of Ray Bans and look out the window.

This is all new to me and I don’t know what to make of it. But it quickly becomes apparent that my first real romantic relationship is over. What I don’t know then is that we’d actually bump into each other about a year later when I’m a missionary. It will be an awkward encounter where we shake hands (missionaries are forbidden to hug members of the opposite sex) and it’s apparent that whatever spark there was between us is now gone and her mountain of a father will look at me with eyes that say, “my daughter dated this putz? “ Sitting in that plane, I also don’t know that Barbara will be married 18 months later.

I don’t know any of these things, but as the final synthesized string chord hits on “One More Try” I know it’s over, and I know I’m sad about it. As much as I protested, my Oklahoma friend was right, my little heart was a’ breakin’.

I stop listening to George Michael and instead turn on “Rock the House” by this new group called “DJ Jazzy Jeff and the Fresh Prince” so I’d have a more positive outlook when I arrive home several hours later.

Back in 2011, I decide to purchase “One More Try.” It’s going to ruin my “suggestions” on iTunes forever, but if George Michael can evoke such a vivid memory, I figure he deserves $1.29. It’s the least I can do.

LAMEST NEW YEAR'S EVER

2010-12-31T21:27:00.000-08:00

In reverse order, the three lamest New Year's Eves ever:

3. 1996-1997, Downtown Los Angeles. Having rubber bullets shot at me by LAPD riot unit.

2. 2005-2006, Medford, Oregon. Sitting in a screening of Pride and Prejudice. Message waiting for me on the phone when I get out. It's a violent and sexually explicit message left by some drunk guy I didn't know.

1. 2010-2011, Phoenix, AZ. Me, in darkened living room writing this right now.

(FYI: Best ever was 1999-2000, Las Vegas. First ever with Julie.)

FAROE FRIDAY: AWARDS EDITION

2010-12-03T01:08:00.000-08:00

You may have noticed the banner ad at the top of our blog and wondered just why it urges you to vote now. That's a good question, and I'll answer it right now.

The show I host, The Faroe Islands Podcast, has been nominated for a Podcast Award in the "travel" category and we couldn't be more pleased. The winner will be decided by popular vote, so yes, we're in the middle of a popularity contest. And the competition is stiff. We're up against no fewer than FIVE podcasts dealing with Walt Disney World. And two of them have been nominated for the more prestigious "Best Produced" award, which means they likely have a large and motivated fan base.

But those of us who put together the Faroe Islands Podcast believe we can pull off a major upset simply because the Faroe Islands is better than Disney World (I've been to both places, so I should know). And with a little help from all of you, we can make this happen.

All you have to do is click on the banner at the top of the page or go to http://www.podcastawards.com/ and vote for us. The "travel" category is at the very bottom of the page, so you'll have to scroll down a bit. After you vote, the site will (almost always) send a confirmation email to your account. Click on the activation link, and you're good to go.

Under the rules of the competition, fans can vote for their favorite podcast once a day until December 15th. That means our podcast's small but loyal fan base can turn themselves into an outsized number of votes during the next two weeks. But even if you don't listen, and I'm sure many of you don't, we could still use your help with a vote or two, or 10.

So please vote and help us spread the word about the podcast and the Faroe Islands. Thanks.

THE END

2010-11-30T20:32:00.000-08:00

And with that, NaBloPoMo is over. Much to my surprise, I actually made it. I posted 30 times in 30 days, which is about twice the output this space has seen in the previous 11 months. It has cost me sleep and a bit of my sanity and I came within a few minutes of blowing the whole thing with just a few minutes left in Sunday.

And after a project such as this, it's natural to take a look back and see if anything has been learned and what it might mean for the future. And on both counts, the answers are a bit murky.

As for what I learned this month, I think I've learned I'm very close to being completely scheduled out. Increased responsibilities with the kids and increased demands from the podcast have greatly limited my time to do other things. Most of the time spent writing here came out of my sleep time, and that's had some seriously negative consequences. I've been sluggish and grumpy and shorter with my kids than I should be. The lack of sleep has also contributed to what were likely a few depressive episodes this month. That's no good, and it can't really continue.

I've also learned that I'm still finding my "voice" for this period of my life. It was pretty well developed when I was writing humor at BYU (fish-out-of-water, sexually frustrated), and at Cal State, Northridge (liberal smartass), and even while in Texarkana (fish-out-of-water, culturally frustrated). But here, it's a little harder to find. Perhaps I've found it, but I'm really too afraid to embrace it. That humorless and not terribly thoughtful rant against the holidays I posted yesterday was about the easiest thing I've written all month. I just opened up the tap and let the bile flow.

But I don't really like that piece and, quite frankly, if I didn't have the need to post something every day, it wouldn't have seen the light of day. I guess what I didn't like about it was that it was simply a list of grievances without any value added in terms of insight, humor or solutions. In short, it didn't justify it's own existence, which any piece of public writing needs to, in my opinion. But maybe unfiltered anger and dissatisfaction is what I've got to offer right now. If so, I don't think I'm all that interested in serving it up.

So then what does this mean for the future? Well, it certainly means I will NOT be able to keep up a daily posting schedule like I did this month, much as I would like to. But there needs to be more action here in the future and I need to devote more time to writing stuff that isn't email or descriptions of islands in the North Atlantic.

In short, watch this space. Hopefully it will still flicker to life several times each month. But now, a little rest.

HAPPY HELLIDAYS

2010-11-29T21:30:00.001-08:00

I'll just come right out and say I don't like the holidays, at least not since I became a working adult.

It has been a slow realization over the years that began when I started working in the news business. You never get holidays off, but your job is much harder because there really isn't much news happening on Christmas or Labor Day or whenever. Furthermore, all the stores and restaurants are closed, so there's nowhere to get lunch during your normal busy workday. Except, Jack In The Box. They're open on Christmas. For many years, that's what Christmas meant to me, it's the one day each year when I eat at Jack In The Box. That's hardly a day worth celebrating.

Things got much, much worse once the major component of my job title became "full time dad." Everyone already knows the common gripes that come with parenthood: the hours are horrible, you never get any days off, you don't get paid, it's tedious and unrewarding, the people you're working for (assuming they're 4-year-old boys) are complete sociopaths. It's well trodden territory, and it's all true.

But the holidays take those problems and turn them up to 11. Just like working a news job in Christmas, you have to do all the same things you normally so, but you have fewer resources to help out. The preschools are closed for two weeks, you may be traveling, the small, daily rewards you give yourself to help you get through the days aren't available.

So it's harder, but it's called a "holiday." Everyone keeps asking you things like, "how's your holiday?' And the real answer is, "This is no f---ing holiday, this is the exact same thing I do every day, except I'm more tired, more frustrated, I'm working longer hours doing more difficult work, and I have to endure questions from people who want me to pretend that I'm enjoying this crap!" But it usually comes out something like, "it's a lot of work, but we're gettin' by," followed by a forced grin.

The real holiday will be somewhere around January 4th or 5th when everyone is back in school and perhaps the youngest is taking a nap and maybe, just maybe, you can get some rest or steal away for a short bike ride or something.

Until then, I'll endure this "season of joy" through gritted teeth and secretly wish I had been born into a religion that didn't forbid alcohol consumption.

WORDLESS WEEKEND: WORDS

2010-11-28T23:04:00.000-08:00

Oh crap... almost out of time for today.

So here's something, Eliza really seems to be talking a lot these days, which is impressive because she's just barely 13 months old. Two examples:

1) I woke up this morning and Eliza walks up to me and hugs my leg and says something that sounds like "My daddy." It was adorable.

2) Eliza was not good at church today. When we got home, I asked her, "Did you have fun at church today?' She scrunched up her face, and flatly said, "nah." It wasn't adorable, but I laughed so hard I nearly threw up.

WORDLESS WEEKEND: MORE SOVIET WEIRDNESS

2010-11-27T01:41:00.000-08:00

There appears to be no end to the strange television produced under communism. I still have no idea what precisely these people are supposed to be doing. But there is a mime, so you've got that...

FAROE FRIDAY: FUGLA

2010-11-26T01:34:00.000-08:00

One of the funnest things about doing my podcast about the Faroe Islands is getting to meet fun and interesting people. One such person is Jennifer Henke (pictured above). She's an American who lives in the San Francisco Bay area who decided to investigate her Faroese roots a few years ago. The result was a reunion with dozens of long lost relatives, and a book written by her about her experiences.

Henke has been a guest on the podcast a few times before, and we were in the Faroe Islands at the same time last summer. So when I was driving by her village, I paid her a visit. And a little of our conversation can be found in this week's show...

As always, you can listen to the show on our media player at the top of the the podcast blog, get it on iTunes, or download it directly here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Podcast_73.mp3

THANKS

2010-11-25T01:51:00.000-08:00

I know I just spilled a few million pixels bagging on Thanksgiving, but I actually like it in theory, if not in practice. So in the tradition of this day of thanks, let me count up the things I'm thankful for. Let's see... One, two...

Three...

Ah yes... four... the most important thing I'm thankful for.

Happy Thanksgiving, y'all. I'll go back to complaining tomorrow.

TURKEY-EVE

2010-11-24T15:12:00.000-08:00

Oh crap! It's late in the day and I've not written here.

Not much time to write anything profound (although it has never stopped me before), but I'll offer one short take on Thanksgiving, a holiday I like in theory--who can say being thankful for stuff is bad?--but hate in practice.

Mostly it's a turkey thing. I really don't like eating turkey. Don't like holidays centered around meals at all. And this one is a doozy. It can last for hours and, if there are strangers around, I'm subjected to a constant barrage of questions centered around why I'm not eating turkey and usually ending with a plea to enter therapy.

I'm also somewhat bemused by how traditional Thanksgiving is, at least in terms of gender roles. No matter how progressive a family is, when Thanksgiving rolls around, the wife is in the kitchen and men tend to gather around the TV watching football... even if they don't like football. I don't know that I hate that, but I find it interesting.

And now I've got to go retrieve my car from the window glass replacement shop. A full-length takedown of the holidays will come at a later date.

I AM NOT STALKING PAUL F. TOMPKINS

2010-11-23T00:34:00.000-08:00

As soon as somebody starts a sentence with, "last night I had a dream that...", it's time to start ignoring that person. They've got nothing interesting left to say.

With that in mind, I've been having some odd dreams lately. The first involved me just sitting around reading a book called, "Big Freaking Deal: A Parent's Guide to Lowering a Child's Self Esteem." I've no idea what that's supposed to mean, but I know that somewhere buried in my subconscious is a best-selling book just waiting to get out.

But the stranger evening apparition involves Paul F. Tompkins. For those of you who don't know who Paul F. Tompkins, shame on you. He's a wildly talented stand up comic who has worked with the likes of the Mr. Show crew. Much of his live act is improvised, which is not an easy thing to do. I've seen him live a few times and have laughed so hard I nearly peed myself.

I don't know Paul F. Tompkins, though I've no doubt he's a lovely person spend time with.

But when I shut my eyes last night, I was holding an invitation to Mr. Tompkins' birthday party. I've no idea when his actual birthday is, but in this dream, it was on Thanksgiving Day. (This dream may be based on an actual experience where I scored an invite to Dave Foley's birthday party in 1999. Foley was a former Kid In The Hall. I couldn't go because I was out of town that weekend, but he told stories about the party the next week on the Tonight Show.)

Back to the PFT party... The invitation was printed on a sheet of copy paper and featured an itinerary for the day, and I must admit, it looked pretty lame. People were supposed to meet at his house at about 2:00 PM and start drinking (kind of a non-starter for me as I don't even drink). Then there was supposed to be some hanging around a pool and more drinking. The big highlight of the evening would come at 2:00 AM, when everyone went to a local Best Buy to wait in line for the Black Friday opening at 6.

In the dream, I'm trying to convince Julie that the party will be really cool and that hanging outside of a Best Buy at 2 in the morning with a bunch of drunk people is really fun. Julie counters (correctly) that I hate all of the things listed on the flier and therefore would have a terrible time at the party. I counter with some really sound logic like, "Yeah, but it's Paul F. Tompkins' birthday!"

I woke up truly puzzled by what this was all supposed to mean. Most theories these days say that dreams don't really mean anything and it's basically just your brain taking out the trash, and I'm inclined to agree. I'm just surprised something that odd was even lurking around there to be discarded.

But one thing is certain: this is the kind of post you get when you're 23 days into a 30 day writing project.

MIDDLE-AGE TREAD

2010-11-22T00:20:00.000-08:00

So there's this group of friends of mine who were really close for many years but we've since been scattered to the four winds and haven't gotten together in a long time. We used to get together once a year, but eventually everyone got married and had kids and got real jobs with limited vacation time and it all just sort of broke down. So what are a bunch of 40-somethings, some of who are growing a bit thick in the middle, supposed to do?

A during the Labor Day break, two members of the old posse were sitting around mulling over just this problem when they hit on the idea of a long-distance bicycle ride down the Pacific Coast... or at least part of it. This idea turned out to be a stroke of genius for a few reasons.

First, it combined the notion of fitness with hanging out with friends. Second, it was immediately titled the "Mid-Life Crisis Bike Trip." This meant most of us were given immediate sign-off on the project by our significant-others. After all, who wants to say no to fitness? And the "mid-life crisis" label subtly implies that the alternative to this trip is buying a sports car and having an affair. By comparison, a bike trip with some friends is nothing.

Now we're deep in the planning phase, with routes being mapped out and people looking at new bikes and Lycra shorts being eyed suspiciously in the store. And I must say, I'm pretty excited about the whole thing. Before I got a driver's licence, I rode a lot. When I was 14, I even bicycled from Rochester to Niagara Falls, Canada with another 14-year-old friend (I've no idea how I got permission to do such a thing).

I've started training and it's become quite apparent I'm not 14, or 24, or even 34. During my epic teenage ride, I literally hopped onto a bike and rode it to Canada. No training. Not even any stretching was required. I think I wore a pair of jeans. Now it's more complicated. Arms and legs actually get sore and various important bodily regions can become numb if you sit the wrong way. I also get tired and thirsty sometimes after a ride. I don't ever remember feeling that when I was 14.

Bikes have gotten more complicated, too. The last time I really looked for a bike was in 1998. I've tuned up that bike and am riding it now to get back into shape. But I think I may need something a little better suited for the job, and there are a mind-numbing number of options and geometry and carbon forks and computerized shifting and other things like SRAM that I don't even know what they are but everybody seems to think you need.

Plenty of time to work that out, I guess. The important thing is that I get my lard-ass on a bike and start riding more. I'll need to be in much better shape if I'm going to pull this off. Mentally, too. The thing that perhaps frightens me most about this project is the prospect of being alone with my thoughts for 8 hours every day for an entire week. I actually don't like that. It's kind of like meditation, and that just drags ugly sludge up from the recesses of your mind.

My early test rides have gone better than I would have imagined, after having two blowouts on my first two attempts. I actually did a 20 mile ride in about 90 minutes and felt pretty good when it was over. So there may be hope for me yet. I'll keep you posted as the planning and training progresses.

WORDLESS WEEKEND: THE FLOP

2010-11-21T02:26:00.000-08:00

In basketball, soccer, and (if you're the kicker) in football, having mastery of the flop is an essential skill. I was not aware, however, that it was needed to attend city council meetings...

WORDLESS WEEKEND: NO NAKED BOYS

2010-11-20T01:32:00.000-08:00

This is a photo from one of the more amusing moments from the summer. We had friends over and someone turned on the sprinkler and that's all the incentive Nate and Will need to strip down to absolutely nothing.

So they're running around the backyard and eventually they come back inside, where our friend's daughter is playing the piano. They run towards her and she says:

"No, no! No naked boys."

As you see, her command fell on deaf ears.

FAROE FRIDAY: FOOD AND FOOTBALL

2010-11-19T01:02:00.000-08:00

I've put out another podcast this week, so I'm going to tell you about it.

This week, the Faroe Islands National Football team played a match against Scotland and, well, it didn't go well. But it was excuse enough to talk to our intrepid international sports correspondent, David Scally, who once chartered a fishing trawler in an attempt to visit the Faroes. But that's a different story altogether.

Then, part two of our conversation with Leif Sorensen about fine dining on the Faroes. And finally, we travel to Sumba (pictured above) to look for the beautiful people.

As always, you can listen on our audio player on the podcast blog, on iTunes, or get the file directly here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Podcast_72.mp3

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE MAIL TRIBUNE

2010-11-18T01:55:00.001-08:00

Dear Mail Tribune:

Before we get started here, I need to make one thing clear: I like you. I think you’re a good newspaper. You’re an important resource to our community. I’ve worked alongside of several of your reporters and photographers and have found them to be hard working and professional people. I was also the subject of a story in your paper a few years ago and I thought I was treated very fairly. In short: I’d like you to stick around.

But with how you’re handling your transition to becoming a paid site, I’m genuinely concerned you won’t be with us much longer.

The concerns started when you first announced you would be putting most of the content on your website behind a paywall. Immediately, your site had ads informing readers about the change. But if you clicked on the ad, there was no information about pricing, and no way to actually sign up to start paying for access to the Mail Tribune site.

Once pricing information was available online, I learned the link on the ad was the least of your problems. The price for access to the website is $14.99 per month, the same price as a subscription to the print edition.

There’s a lot wrong with this, and it’s hard to know where to start, but let’s start with the price. Put bluntly, it’s too high. People aren’t going to pay the same for online access as print access. While I’m sympathetic to the fact that news costs money to gather and distribute, that’s not all you’re paying for when you buy a printed newspaper. You’re also paying for newsprint, printing costs, and a costly distribution network.

But online, the customer has already paid for the distribution in the form of a computer or phone, and access to some internet network. It doesn’t cost the same to put out an online newspaper, and people aren’t going to be willing to pay the same price.

Two examples come to mind in the music industry when they were facing similar issues. Back when Napster was revealing that people wanted to download music, the major labels started selling music online. They charged the exact same price for a digital download as they did for a physical CD. The plan failed miserably and only started working once Steve Jobs convinced the labels to start selling songs for 99 cents.

Compare that to what Radiohead did when they released “In Rainbows” in 2007. The band employed a novel “pay what you want” system for downloads where fans could pay as little as nothing for the album. I’ll skip to the end of the story and say Radiohead made more money off of “In Rainbows” than any of their other albums, but that’s actually not the point. (The point also isn’t that your paper should employ a “pay what you want” model, just in case you’re wondering.

Research found that most people paid between $5 and $10 for the album. When asked by journalists how they came up with the price, customers said they tried to figure out about how much the band would get in royalties on an album sale, then paid about that much. So here’s the point: people have a basic idea of what is fair and they don’t mind paying what they feel is a fair price. From an informal survey of people I know, a fair price for you is probably somewhere around the $5-$7 per month range.

What I suspect is that you priced the website at $14.99 per month to encourage people to simply subscribe to the print edition of the Mail Tribune. After all, online access comes free with a print subscription. I’m not familiar with the business model for newspapers, but I’ve a hunch that print advertising is still where the money is. So it looks like the plan may be to use the popular website to artificially pump up the print subscription numbers. In other words, to use the product people do want to convince people to keep buying the product they don’t want.

Evidence of the folly of this thinking can be found in my hometown of Rochester, New York. When digital photography was on the rise, Kodak was more concerned with preserving their margins on film (the product fewer customers wanted) than on establishing themselves as a leader in digital imaging (the product customers wanted). The result was the “Photo CD.” Customers were to take pictures on Kodak film, then turn it in for developing, then get their pictures back on a CD ROM. It was a dismal failure. Kodak’s stock traded at about $80 in 1995. Now you can pick up a share for about $5.

You’re probably hampered a bit, too, by your ownership. The very people who would be willing to pay $14.99 out of a sense of duty or liberal guilt or something also happen to be the types who resent writing a check to help prop up Rupert Murdoch’s empire. But in the grand scheme of things, that’s small potatoes.

The main point is, get that online price down to something in the $5-$7 range, because I think you’ve probably priced yourself out of the market. But while I’ve got your attention, here are some other suggestions of ways to do more with your online presence without spending much more money. On any given day, you’ve got way more reporters in the field than anyone else. Press that advantage and use it to expand your presence online and elsewhere in the community.

Get some video back up on the site. A few years ago, you were the first news outlet in the valley to put news video online. You even beat all the local TV stations to this goal by simply by sending your reporters out with camcorders and putting the raw footage on YouTube. If you want to get more fancy, you could even put out a short 10-minute newscast using rewritten stories from the paper. This valley is littered with unemployed broadcast journalists that could probably do this on a freelance basis.

Podcast. Another extremely low-cost way to repurpose your material. Slate Magazine set up a nice template for this. They started by simply having someone read a selection from the magazine each day, and then expanded their offerings to include roundtable discussions with their reporters on various subjects. In your case, you could produce a morning podcast featuring highlights of the local stories in the print edition… something to listen to instead of what passes for local news on the radio. Manpower needed for this is minimal, and server space (assuming you don’t already have it) can be obtained for about $10 per month.

Maybe, just maybe, it might be time to think about getting rid of the print edition altogether. Might be too soon just yet, but it’s certainly something to think about.

Like I said at the top, I like you and I want to see you survive. But behind your paywall, you seemed destined to fade into irrelevance. And if that happens, we all lose.

Best Wishes,
Matt

TINY TRIVIA

2010-11-17T02:35:00.000-08:00

It's much too late and I can't finish my longer post I'm working on. So instead, here's a trivia question I got wrong on Monday night:

What comedian and filmmaker said the following:

"All I need to make a comedy is a park, a policeman and a pretty girl."

Hint: It's not Benny Hill

CHRISTMAS COMES EARLY

2010-11-16T02:30:00.000-08:00

There are many reasons why I love the internet, but a day like today is a pretty good example. I was working (yes, actually) working on my computer when I see a tweet scroll by that says "Girl Talk Album Review."

What? New Girl Talk Album? Yup, it's true. You can download it for free at his website:
http://www.illegal-art.net/allday/

To understand my excitement, perhaps a little background is order. Girl Talk is basically the Beethoven of the mashup genre. He takes hundreds and hundreds of small hunks of songs and assembles them into full length mixes that become something above and beyond the source material. I compare him to Beethoven because he hears sound differently than other people and is able to turn that sound into art. If you want to see an example of how he works, check out this video I shared in this space last year:
http://workman.blogspot.com/2009/03/more-girl-talk.html

Girl Talk's (real name: Greg Gillis) last album, "Feed the Animals," was nothing short of brilliant. I'll go so far as to call is the coolest musical thing ever. About 350 samples were used to create the album. There are moments on that album that actually made me scream with joy the first time I heard them.

That sounds a bit extreme, I know. I assure you, I'm a pretty-much sane person. However, my brain is hooked up a little oddly to the point where certainly auditory forms of stimulation affect me more than others I know. So when I can listen to 300 great songs in an hour, it just knocks me on my back.

How best to describe this? When Girl Talk plays Deee Lite, Nirvana, and Salt-N-Peppa at the same time, I swear I can feel the individual parts of my brain that store these songs being stimulated and the synapses creating new and strong connections between them. It feels good. It kind of tickles.

So seemingly out of nowhere, the internet drops a new Girl Talk release. Just like the Radiohead album a few years ago, the time between knowledge of the release and listening to it is remarkably short. I would have been even shorter if Girl Talk's website hadn't kept on crashing.

Instead of a gradual roll out where the music press gets to listen and write and tell us what to think about it, we all got to listen at the same time. Within minutes, trainspotters took to Wikipedia and blogs to start trying to identify the hundreds of samples that make up "All Day." (Good luck, after more than two years of searching, there are still at least 15 samples from "Feed the Animals" that haven't been found yet.)

So now it's extremely late and I'm taking my second spin through this new album. Do I love it as much as the previous one? It will take some time to know, but any album that mashes up Radiohead and Ol' Dirty Bastard without making it sound like a gimmick is probably pretty good.

Ooh... Beastie Boys and Iggy Pop! No more writing, only listening.

THE SHOW SO FAR

2010-11-15T01:13:00.000-08:00

The point of blogging every day is to write about something interesting and useful and unique, not to write about the fact that you're writing. But my longer piece isn't done yet and we're about halfway through this experiment and that seems as good a reason as any to evaluate how things are going and get a prognosis for the rest of the month.

As for how things are going so far, I'm pretty pleased that I've been able to post stuff every day, and that most of it has been writing that's more than 500 words long. So far, so good.

But the prognosis for the future is much more cloudy. This is really kicking my butt in terms of sleep. These early morning hours are just about the only ones where I've got the house to myself and I can actually concentrate on writing (as opposed to whether or not one of our children will die because of a falling bookshelf or something.

I'm noticing my lack of sleep is starting to affect my emotional and physical well being. I'm always tired, and mostly grumpy, and a little stressed about whatever else I need to get done while I'm writing this (right now, this week's edition of the podcast it awaiting my attention).

So more so than other years, I don't know if I'll actually make it. In the past, the problem would have been forgetfulness. This year, I may just chose to walk away and get some sleep instead.

The jury is still out.

WORDLESS WEEKEND: TWO PICTURES

2010-11-14T00:21:00.000-08:00

For this Wordless Weekend post we offer two pictures. The first is of Eliza being extremely cute... And the second is of Nate... well... being Nate.

WORDLESS WEEKEND: PRE-TAPED

2010-11-13T14:16:00.000-08:00

Mr Show's classic "pre-taped talk show" sketch. The whole thing swallows its tail at the end. Brilliant.

FAROE FRIDAY: FOOD, FOOD, FOOD

2010-11-12T00:18:00.000-08:00

Food seems an odd subject for me to tackle, seeing as I have made a name for myself by maintaining the eating habits of a 6-year-old well into my 40s. But it's an interesting subject, so tackle it we must.

Faroese food has a reputation for being... how best to put this... bad. Lots of dried fish and lamb, maybe some whale blubber or, if you're lucky beef. Not very tasty. For years, Faroese restaurants served mostly beef... with your choice of sauce. But things are starting to change.

Part of that change is Leif Sorensen. He worked in the kitchens of some of Europe's finest restaurants before returning to his home in the Faroe Islands to start a fine dining establishment. In this week's podcast, I talk to Sorensen about that experience, and find out if his restaurant was able to survive.

As always, you can listen on iTunes, or you can download the file directly here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Podcast_71.mp3

REMEMBERING GREG

2010-11-11T01:15:00.001-08:00

On the morning of August 26th, Greg Gibbs wrote the following on his Facebook profile:

"what is in store for me today? Recording? Pool? drinky drink? Silkscreening? Ebay? too many choices...make money? hell no!"

Later that day, Greg died. For a number of reasons, that event passed without my notice. Tuesday was Greg’s birthday, and I dutifully left a short note on his Facebook page before learning what had happened just over two months ago.

The active portion of my friendship with Greg lasted just four months and was born of mutual loathing of Rexburg, Idaho where both of us somehow found ourselves attending college. He had come from Ohio, I had just arrived from upstate New York. We were on the same floor in the dorms and two of a small handful of students there not from either Utah or Idaho. In a place like Rexburg, that’s enough to base a friendship on.

Turns out, we had other things in common, too. We both liked the type of hardcore punk coming from Los Angeles in the late 1980s (it was the late 1980s, so it wasn’t a nostalgia thing), and he was actually dating a girl I was friends with back in Rochester.

So we became fast friends and spent a lot of time together that semester. We made something of an odd pair with Greg typically wearing all black and sporting a look that split the difference between goth and punk, while I was all northeastern preppie with thick, floppy bangs, docksiders, and an extensive collection of rugby shirts. But, even in the terrible stinkhole of Rexburg, we had fun. He got me to stand on skateboard for pretty much the only time in my life (also the only time I was ever busted by the police for skateboarding) and introduced me to a lot of cool people, one of whom would become my first girlfriend.

The apex (if you can call it that) of our collaboration was The Buttwhalers… also known as the Phallic 5. It started one afternoon after Greg got home from guitar class. He walked into my dorm room with his black (of course) electric guitar around his neck and said, “come on, everybody, let’s sing a song!” Then he started playing the Mormon children’s classic “Give, Said the Little Stream.” I joined in, shouting the lyrics in my best Johnny Rotten impersonation. This apparently amused Greg, and moments later we were recording the song into his cassette recorder.

Other recordings followed. Not surprisingly, most were adaptations of songs Greg had to learn for his class. The classic of the bunch was probably “Go Tell Dean Sessions,” set to the tune of “Go Tell Aunt Rhody.” Greg wrote it after the Dean of Student Life, who really was a pretty despicable person, tried to get him kicked out of school for… well, for nothing really, he just didn’t like Greg. The dean’s attempt at character assassination failed, and this song is Greg’s revenge. He posted a recording of it, and two other songs on his Facebook page. I tried listening several months ago and was so horrified at hearing my 18-year-old self try to sing that I’ve never been able to get all the way through the recording.

The semester ended and I went back to New York and Greg went back to Ohio. And that was that. A few years later, I met a friend of my older sister’s who had dated Greg for a little while, but other than that I had basically no contact or knowledge of what he was up to.

Then came Facebook and, all of the sudden, old friends were coming out of the woodwork. One day, I get a friend request from Greg and we share the 3-4 emails it usually takes to catch up before settling into the low-touch, low-impact sort of friendship that Facebook makes possible. In time, he would post the requisite embarrassing photos and, of course that horrific audio recording.

So, with the exception of the Facebook stuff, I hadn’t really had any contact with Greg in 22 years, but learning he had died hit me like a ton of bricks. I’ve spent some time trying to figure out exactly why I’m having this reaction, and I don’t know if I’ve drawn any firm conclusions. I’m sure the closeness in age has something to do with it. He was about six months older than me and the first friend so close to my age who has died.

Maybe it’s the time in my life that we were friends that made such an impact. Those four months in Idaho were not so great. Having friends like Greg helped make that time much less dismal. I’ve looked back at his Facebook page and seen tributes from people who had only met him once, and one who had only talked to him on the phone on one occasion. So maybe it didn’t take much for Greg to make a big impression on a person, an impression that you didn’t even know existed until you learned its source was gone.

I don’t know the answers to any of those questions. All I know is that a long-lost (and newly rediscovered) friend is dead, and the world is a little poorer for it.

BUMPER STALKER

2010-11-10T02:21:00.000-08:00

I'm working on a longer piece for tomorrow, so today, I just have this small thought inspired by a bumper sticker I see all the time. It's on the back of a truck parked two doors down from us and says:

"If There Wasn't a Pearl Harbor, There Wouldn't Have Been A Hiroshima."

This bumper sticker drives me up a wall, so much so that I just want to find the owner of that truck and start yelling at him.

The debate over whether it was a good idea to drop the bomb rages to this day, and I don't think I really have much to add to that debate. Some say it saved us from a long and bloody invasion. Others claim it was an unwarranted, illegal, and cruel attack on a largely civilian target.

I see both sides of the argument and I don't really think I have a deep enough base of knowledge to make a forceful case one way or the other. But it's clear that the attack on Pearl Harbor and dropping an atomic bomb on Japan really aren't equivalent actions. Pearl Harbor was a military target. Hiroshima was, well, a city.

What annoys me about this bumper sticker is that it asks you to view both of these events as equal in the severity, the latter being the equal payment for former, perhaps with a few interest payments thrown in. It makes about as much sense to have a bumper sticker that says:

"If You Hadn't Run Over My Dog, I Wouldn't Have Had To Murder Your Family"

I'm deeply troubled by the fact that we dropped nuclear bombs on Japan all those years ago. I recognize there may have been some sound military reasoning for it at the time, so I'm hesitant to judge the people who made that decision based on what we know about the incident now.

One day, I'd like to have better idea of why we did what we did and if it was the right thing to do. Bumper stickers like my neighbor's take me further from that ideal.

TRIVIAL

2010-11-09T01:09:00.000-08:00

A couple of times each month, I like to meet with a few friends at a local pub and participate in a local trivia tournament. I do this because I'm of the impression that I'm a storehouse of worthless knowledge and as such am a perfect trivia player. Tonight, that theory was proven completely wrong. My team did poorly. And to prove it, here's a sample of the questions we missed:

Q: In ancient Egypt, if a surgeon had a patient die, what part of their body did they cut off?
A: Both hands

Q: What state has the highest percentage of people who walk to work?
A: Alaska

Q: What state has the most tornadoes per square mile?
A: Florida

Q: What percentage of people in the US have never been to a dentist?
A: 40%

Q: How tall was the original Stanley Cup?
A: 7.28 inches (We guessed 36 inches, which is only .75 inches taller than the current cup)

Q: What kind of berry is a bounceberry?
A: Cranberry

Q: What state was home to America's first brewery?
A: New Jersey

Q: True or False: Tug-of-War was once an Olympic sport.
A: True

Q: Former President Franklin Pierce was arrested for allegedly running over an old woman with his a) horse, b) carriage, or c) car.
A: Horse (the charges were later dropped)

There is one other question I got wrong that I can't even bear to admit here. It was an easy question that everyone should know. The rest of our team had it right, and I insisted the answer be changed... to the incorrect answer.

Oh well, at least we knew that "Muhammad" is the most common male name in the world.

15 ALBUMS

2010-11-08T00:20:00.000-08:00

So there was this meme going around Facebook for a while this summer where you were supposed to pick 15 albums that were important to you in some way. Maybe it was 15 albums that would stick with you, or that would define you, or something… it mutated a bit while it was out there. The rules were that you were supposed to pick the albums quickly and not think too much about it and just post the albums quickly. But I missed that part of the note and wrote this really long explanation and then forgot to post it. So I dust is off here tonight for your reading (or ignoring) pleasure. For you people on Facebook, if you tagged me on this meme back in August, you got tagged here. So there.

1. Billy Joel, 52nd Street. For any of you that thought I was aspiring to hipster-geezer status, this should pretty much put that to rest. This is the first album I bought with my own money. I thought it fairly sophisticated musical listening for an elementary school student. At least it wasn’t Raffi.

2. Depeche Mode, Black Celebration. In 1983, my favorite album was “Sports” by Huey Lewis and the News. Then my older sister went to Germany and came back with a 12 inch single by Depeche Mode. While the band had already gotten big in the west, they were pretty much unheard of in upstate New York. But I liked it and wondered why I had never heard any of it on the radio. Days later, I did something daring and turned the dial past “Q-92” and discovered college radio. All of the sudden, the world of music was a whole lot bigger. Nothing would be the same. In 1986, Black Celebration came out and I saw my first concert when Depeche Mode played a nearly-empty Finger Lakes Performing Arts center. Blew my mind. Black Celebration is still one of my favorite albums from that decade.

3. Public Enemy, Fear of a Black Planet. I’m driving home from college from Utah to New York, taking a serious detour through Arizona, Tennessee, Kentucky and Michigan. My friend Sam and I are pulled over in Oklahoma under suspicious circumstances, given a warning for basically doing nothing wrong, then let go. Feeling a little paranoid, we set the cruise control exactly at the speed limit and hope that will be enough to keep us out of trouble. But right at the Arkansas state line, the police are waiting for us. They pull us over, make us stand in the rain, and search our car for drugs. Eventually, they call for a drug-sniffing dog, who tracks mud all over our car. After about 90 minutes we are allowed to continue, but we’re left with a lingering paranoia. Sam reaches into his bag, and pulls out “Fear of a Black Planet” and pops it into the cassette deck. It was the perfect soundtrack for the rest of the trip (and the THIRD time we got pulled over for doing NOTHING).

4. Radiohead, OK Computer. I was late to the party on this one, but I finally discovered the album in 1998s. For reasons too complex to explain here, I ended up with 5th row seats to Radiohead’s show at the Universal Ampatheater and decided to attend. The show featured Thom Yorke having a nervous breakdown on stage, an ex-girlfriend dealing with extremely difficult personal problems, and a shattering moment of clarity when I realized that I was miserable in every aspect of my life. But the music… the music was amazing. The next day, I bought OK Computer. Twelve years later, it’s still in heavy rotation.

5. Beastie Boys, Licensed to Ill. While it’s not the Beastie Boy’s best album (that honor goes to either “Paul’s Boutique” or “Hello Nasty”), “Licensed to Ill” will always hold a special place in my heart. Timing is everything, and this album came out when I was 16… the perfect age for the expression of snotty teenage rebellion. And the humor was on my level. MCA howled, “every day I take a wee and I don’t go to work,” and I understood just where he was coming from. To this day one of my fondest teenage memories (perhaps my only fond teenage memory) is sitting in a car with my friend Scott screaming “Ali Baba and the 40 thieves” at the top of our lungs while “Rhyming and Stealing” played.

6. Deee Lite, World Clique. It’s 1990 and I’m at college after being a Mormon missionary for two years. Being a Mormon missionary is something like being a monk in that (beyond a handshake) you have no physical contact with members of the opposite sex and access to the news from the outside world is limited. But now I’m home and the world seems completely different than when I left two years earlier. After all, the Berlin Wall has fallen and Communism is collapsing throughout Europe. There’s also a wave of optimism right now. For the first time in a while, people are feeling positive. I’m feeling positive, but for other reasons. I’m sitting on a couch with a girl named Nancy. I’m pretty sure we’re going to make out later tonight. She turns on MTV and on comes this colorful and exuberant video for “Groove is in the Heart.” People are wearing crazy clothes and dancing in front of psychedelic backgrounds. Two funky looking guys are standing behind turntables while a woman in an argyle bodysuit sings… and Bootsy Collins plays bass. It looks like a pretty good time, and at that moment, it seemed to represent all the fun and possibilities of this new stage of my life. A good time, indeed. (Iraq invaded Kuwait around this time, too, so it wasn’t all roses.)

7. Portishead, Dummy. Hard to imagine just how different this sounded when “Sour Times” started playing on alternative radio stations choking underneath a pile of flannel grunge. A few years after this album came out, I saw Portishead perform live in Santa Monica. An amazing show.

8. Dizzy Gillespie, Con Alma. This is just a low cost sampler of some of Dizzy’s Afro-Cuban era music, but it’s the first jazz album I ever owned. I arrived via the ska door. I had been to a Toasters show, and they did a cover of “Tunisia” that gave me chills. I bought their album and resolved to find a recording of the original tune as well. As it turns out, I didn’t like the version of “Tunisia” on this album, but the rest of the album blew me away. I’ve added somewhat to my jazz collection since then, but this $5.99 CD with no liner notes is still my favorite.

9. Elvis Costello and the Brodsky Quartet, The Juliet Letters. My cabinet groans under the weight of all the Elvis Costello albums I own, so why did this one make the list instead of all the others? The Juliet letters has been written off as Costello’s dalliance with chamber music, nothing to be taken seriously, and certainly nothing that should be compared to, say, “This Year’s Model.” I disagree. I don’t know if it’s the format or just the time in his life, but Costello’s songwriting shows as much or more depth of emotion here as anywhere I’ve seen. And some of the themes, such as disillusion with adulthood, hit me right where I lived in 1993. I was poor when this album came out, but the owner of a record store let me take it without paying because I came in every day to listen to it. I bought the double-disk reissue years later, to Elvis got his money eventually.

10. Girl Talk. Feed the Animals. I’ve often compared music to drugs, and this album is basically a speedball. It’s everything that’s awesome about music cut into pieces, pureed in a blender, distilled, and then injected directly into an artery. “Feed the Animals” really should be a novelty album, what with its parings of Nirvana with Salt N’ Peppa and the like. But damn, it’s one of the best albums I’ve heard in my life. Two years later, this “novelty” hasn’t worn out its welcome. And unlike a speedball, it’s unlikely to leave you dead in some skanky Hollywood motel.

11. Z-Trip, Uneasy Listening. I was at the “Brain Freeze” show being put on by Cut Chemist and DJ Shadow at the El Rey in Los Angeles when this unknown guy from Phoenix takes the stage and starts doing some crazy stuff on (I think) a total of six turntables. It was equal parts hilarious and genius. Here was a guy who could rock a room with obscure cuts, but never take himself too seriously. A year or two later, this mix came out that sums up where he was in his career circa 2000. Just like the live show, it’s a stunning listen. Still can’t get enough of it all these years later.

12. Ben Folds Five. This is another example of music that hit me where I lived at a specific time in my life. I was 25 when Ben Folds Five released their self-titled debut album. One song begins, “I was never cool in school, I’m sure you don’t remember me. And now it’s been ten years, I’m still wondering who to be.” That pretty well summed it up. I listened to this album constantly as I drove to and from my job working as a liftie in Park City. The kind of job that delivers just enough money mixed with a sufficient amount of fun that you can delay making any life choices for a couple of years. Of course, now it would be just as accurate to sing, “Now it’s been 20 years, I’m still wondering who to be…”

13. Gorillaz, Plastic Beach/Demon Days. I can’t make up my mind on this one. “Demon Days” came earlier and (in what’s becoming a theme on this list) perfectly summed up the uneasy feeling of living during the War on Terror ™. It’s easily one of my favorite albums of all time. But now there’s “Plastic Beach.” I think it’s even better. It’s only been out for 7 months, so it may be early to know if it will have the staying power of its predecessor. But I’ll make the call anyway: it has the staying power of its predecessor.

14.Madness, One Step Beyond. What can I say about this album? It was my introduction to ska. It had a credit for a band member who contributed “various shouts.” They cover “Swan Lake.” It ends with a military march dedicated to chipmunks. It is a giddy, exciting, exuberant, dizzying, thrilling, masterpiece. I don’t even feel old when I’m listening to it.

15. Various Artists, Saturday Night Fever Soundtrack. I at least have to give a shout-out to the first album I ever owned (as opposed to the first album I ever purchased with my own money). This album was a gift for my 8th birthday and I treasured it. I listened to it until I literally wore down the grooves. I was much too young to see the movie when I owned the album, and I was certainly too young to go to discos. That always kind of bummed me out. When I was 22, I finally saw the movie. Turns out, Saturday Night Fever is a really bad movie. I was much better off with just the album.

WORDLESS WEEKEND - THE PARK

2010-11-07T01:06:00.000-07:00

With fall in full swing, Nate and Will went to the park with their mom, who was nice enough to snap a few pictures. Will enjoyed the leaves. Nate enjoyed the dandelions.

And they both enjoyed riding bikes... except Nate who isn't so much riding a bike as he is riding a girl's plastic tricycle. For heaven sakes, it's not even a Big Wheel, it's pink and purple plastic thing that was given to us for Eliza to ride. It's not like Nate doesn't have his own bike. Oh he does. He's got an AWESOME bike. He got it for Christmas. My boys can't read, so I'm free to tell you that Nate's bike is much better than Wills. But he won't ride it. Instead, he wants to ride this nonsense designed for a baby girl, not a four-year-old boy.

Ok, ok. This is becoming less and less wordless by the minute. I'll calm down. Here's the picture...

WORDLESS WEEKEND

2010-11-06T02:50:00.000-07:00

To help make things easier on lazy bums like me, the good folk at NaBloPoMo have suggested that lesser bloggers try "wordless weekends," where you can just post a youtube link or photo instead of actually writing something. I've already written something in the form of this lame paragraph, but anyway, it will be wordless after this. Here's Thom Yorke laughing in a very strange manner...

FAROE FRIDAY: FRIGHT

2010-11-05T01:46:00.000-07:00

I try not to cross-post things from the podcast blog here, but this really is worth having a listen to. It's a podcast I made from a recording I made inside a tunnel (pictured above). I got some weird sounds and later somebody told me the place was supposed to be haunted. I'm writing a short essay on the topic that I'll post here later. But for now, you can listen to the show I made about it by looking up "Faroe Islands Podcast" on itunes and listening to Episode 70. Or you can download the file directly here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Podcast_70.mp3

Wanna hear the unedited audio I recorded in the tunnel? Sure you do. It's right here:
http://traffic.libsyn.com/faroepodcast/Tunnel_spooky.WAV

Also, here's a short video we made outside the tunnel:

Enjoy your weekend.

UNNECESSARY YOU

2010-11-04T01:10:00.000-07:00

This is one of what may be several posts that will attempt to answer the question: “Where the hell have you been for the past year?”

It’s a fair question you ask. Since participating in NaBloPoMo last year and successfully posting for 30 days in a row, I cranked out just over a dozen posts in the other 11 months. That’s a pretty serious drop off when you consider I used to average about 10-15 posts a month here. So what exactly happened?

The two obvious suspects are a person and a country. The person is Eliza, our delightful daughter who was born about a year ago. Her arrival in our lives has been one of the most wonderful experiences ever, but it seriously eroded the time I have to spend on things that aren’t my children.

The country is the Faroe Islands. In the past 18 months, I’ve devoted more and more time to my media projects about the islands, including a blog, http://faroepodcast.blogspot.com , a Facebook page http://www.facebook.com/faroepodcast , and a podcast/radio program. The obsession with the Faroes started right here on this very blog and has ballooned into a multi-media non-empire enjoyed by literally dozens of people around the world. But interviewing people from other countries and editing programs and researching topics takes time. Much of that time has come out of my sleep time. The rest, comes from here.

There are other, more niggling things that chipped away at the foundation of this blog. Being able to share stuff quickly on Facebook and Twitter http://twitter.com/matthewworkman makes me feel like I’m connecting with people and being somewhat creative, which was the main purpose of this blog.

But the silent killer in all this is a much more subtle thing… the very vastness of the web itself. I’ll explain…

Way back in the early 1990s, before the internet was a going concern, I wrote a humor column for a weekly newspaper written by naughty students at BYU. Considering the audience and venue, it was actually pretty successful and earned me a small degree of local celebrity that I used mostly to try to score with girls.

Apart from the ego-boost, one of the things that kept me going was the feeling that what I did actually mattered. There were basically two outlets for student writing in Provo back then: the on-campus newspaper (professional and excruciatingly dull) and the off-campus paper (funny, irreverent, occasionally irresponsible). With the stifling atmosphere at the school, we at the off-campus paper really did feel like we were doing God’s work. Sometimes we’d get letters from some student who, like me, had left home back east to attend school in Utah and felt completely at sea in a place others literally called “Zion.” The letters would typically say things like, “I was just about ready to pack up and leave this humorless hellhole when I stumbled across your paper. Made me feel less alone, like maybe there was a place for me here after all.” I lived for letters like that.

With the advent of the internet, the doors were thrown wide open and the possibility of writers gaining a worldwide audience was available to anyone with a computer and access to the Information Superhighway. (That’s what we used to call it back then, the Information Superhighway. Now gather ‘round kids and I’ll tell you about something called a Palm Pilot…) The internet has largely delivered on that promise. There is an abundance of great writing to be had from thousands of sources around the world. Indeed, one of my colleagues from that naughty student newspaper has gone on to international fame by doing nothing more than being an amazing blogger.

But the downside of all this great stuff is that there’s just too much of it. Even if you devoted your every waking hour to it for a week, you could never possibly read all of the great stuff that was posted on the internet on this day alone. So does the world need anyone else adding to that pile of ultimately unusable data? Probably not.

So therein lays the irony. The same internet that empowers the individual also renders him utterly expendable.

Of course, I had always written here for myself, rather than any specific audience, so perhaps that’s no excuse either. All I know is that I’ve been at this for four whole days, and I’m so tired I can hardly stand up. If I’m going to write another 26 of these, I’m going to need more sleep or more Pepsi, and probably a combination of the two.

YOU DOWN WITH G.O.P.? WELL, WAIT AND SEE.

2010-11-03T03:22:00.000-07:00

So what to make of Tuesday’s election results? It’s conventional wisdom that the president’s party loses congressional seats in the midterms. But this looks bigger than “oh, well, you lose a few.” Especially in the House of Representatives, it was more like “you lose a lot.”

I was hoping that I could offer something insightful or perhaps even witty now that most of the races have been decided. But this is one of those annoying moments where it’s not all that accurate to say that everything has changed, but everything has stayed the same, too.

On most major issues, the congress has been paralyzed for some time. After the election, it will still be paralyzed, but for different reasons. Representatives will still shout, one party will accuse the other of being obstructionist, the other will counter that the party in power isn’t interested in compromise. The House of Representatives will almost certainly spend their first week or so passing dozens of bills that will be declared dead on arrival in the Senate.

Put another way, the country’s problems will continue to fester while both parties do little more than posture for the 2012 elections… which I predict Obama will win (you heard it here first).

At least some of the nuttiest candidates didn’t make it into the senate. Christine O’Donnell, who never stood a chance anyway, has been sent back to her coven to figure out another way to get back on TV. And Sharon Angle will never get the chance to tell us what she would do if elected to the Senate, but that’s probably for the better. I imagine she lost once Nevada voters realized that the only person standing between their state and the rest of America’s nuclear waste is Harry Reid.

Rand Paul is headed to Washington, though, and that’s probably not a positive development. I used to think, “how much harm can one crazy person do?” In the Senate, the answer is “quite a lot.”

But still the question remains: what to make of these results? The TV pundits say that America is angry and nervous about the future, and I guess they’re right. I can’t see anyone getting any less angry over the next two years.

The Daily Show will likely continue to be funny. Other than that, not much else to say about the end of this dreary election season, or the equally dreary presidential race that is scheduled to start… right about… now.

NaBloPoMo AGAIN, NATURALLY

2010-11-02T11:46:00.000-07:00

That was a close one. It was 11:00 PM when I realized that day one of NaBloPoMo was almost over and I hadn't written anything. Sad to fail at the challenge on the very first day. Luckily for me, I caught it just in time.

That's a long-winded way of saying, "yes, I am going to actually try and post something... hopefully writing... on this blog every single day." I'm quite surprised and quite flattered by how many people have asked me if I was going to participate this year. Several friends and even my dad asked me.

So the mob has spoken and I will listen. This month will be the toughest yet for getting anything written. My other responsibilities in life have so eaten away at my time as to reduce my blogging time to something approaching zero. There are other factors that have contributed to this space falling mostly fallow, but we'll get into that later.

But this month... this month will be different. We will write, post some videos, tell a few stories. And perhaps, through it all, an old romance with the blog will be rekindled. Or maybe I'll just end up getting one less hour of sleep every night.

I'll keep you posted.

ONE LAST WORD ON SANITY

2010-11-01T23:35:00.000-07:00

In about 24 hours, this will be old news, but I thought I should chime in on the Stewart/Colbert rally that took place over the weekend.

Of course, I couldn’t travel across the country to attend, much as I would have liked to. Indeed, I couldn’t even watch it live, what with feeding kids lunch and errands and stuff like that. But I did get a chance to watch it on TiVo late Saturday, and I gotta say, it was fun viewing. Not only that, it was a (dare I say) hopeful moment in the midst of what has been an otherwise dreary political season.

Like most people, I didn’t know really what to expect from the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. Some said it would be an ironic mockery of political rallies, others thought he was there to hatch some new political movement where lefties rebrand themselves as moderates and attempt to… I don’t know… legalize weed or something. There was even hand wringing among some Democratic organizers that their best campaign workers would be out on the Mall partying instead of trying to get out the vote just days before an important election.

All of these views seem to utterly miss the point. From the start, Stewart framed the event as a rally for people who don’t have time to attend rallies; a rally for people who are genuinely turned off by what typically happens at political gatherings. People who were anxious to attend this rally were never going to knock doors for any political party. Seriously, who has time?

So the event begins and it’s The Roots playing and it was outdoors but they still blew the roof off the dump. There is no gig those guys can’t rock. But I digress. What was immediately noticeable to me was the smiles in the audience and the positive vibe that seemed to exist there. The assembled crowd seemed a creative lot as well, holding signs that ranged from the post-modern (“I’m Holding a Sign”) to the pointed-but-witty (“Birthers for Hawaiian Statehood”) to the just plain silly (“WWOPD: What Would Optimus Prime Do?”).

Over the course of the three hours, there was some music, various comedic bits skewering the conventions of most political rallies, and something resembling a 15 minute sermon by Jon Stewart at the end of the thing. I liked the message. In a nutshell, most Americans are pretty reasonable and understand the compromises required to get through daily life. Only the politicians and pundits don’t get this basic fact, but they run almost all of our public discourse. Not the kind of battle cry one is likely to hear just before storming the Bastille, but perfectly appropriate for the event.

When the whole thing wrapped up, I wondered if the sense of satisfaction I felt was similar to what people attending Glenn Beck’s rally felt last August. To me, it seemed like Beck’s crowd was all about fear and grasping for a lost America that never really existed. But perhaps that’s to be expected. I’m not Beck’s crowd, so perhaps I’m inclined to think the worst of them. I’m sure they thought they were gathered with the understanding that they were there to reclaim America for the normal people, “people like us.”

Oddly enough, that was basically the theme of Saturday’s rally: we’re here to reclaim America for the normal people. Obviously, I tend to think of the crowd at Stewart’s event as the normal people. But in all honesty, it’s probably because they’re more like me.

Whether they were anything like me, they weren’t shouting, and I liked that. I liked most everything about the Rally to Restore Sanity and/or Fear. I liked the music (Kid Rock excepted), I liked the comedy (mostly), and I liked the creativity displayed by the audience. I wish that this rally could be the start of some sort of actual movement. But by its very nature, “sanity” can’t ever be the foundation of a mass movement. First off, shouting makes more noise and will always get more attention. Second, the very sane people who were out on the mall on Saturday are back at their jobs today. They’re picking up their kids from preschool, taking piles of work home, and trying to figure out how to keep the bathroom sink from clogging again. They’re busy, and they’re tired. Just like me.

For one day, though, it was nice to see several thousand “people like us” having a good time and offering hope that maybe everyone can take it down a notch for America. That hope should be completely dead by Tuesday night, but still…

ELIZA 1.0

2010-10-09T21:58:00.000-07:00

Elia,

It's your first birthday, and it seems like I should write something to you to mark this event. But where to start? In the first 52 weeks of your life, you have been every parent's dream. You slept through the night after just a few weeks. You've never had troubles eating (although that's starting to change a little bit now). You've spent most of your waking hours smiling and laughing and embracing every moment of life with a joy and enthusiasm that amazes me.

As your dad, I fell deeply in love with you from day one. You looked up at me with those big blue eyes and that shock of dark hair and you smiled, and I was all yours. (Now I know that some people say a baby that's just a few hours old can't actually smile, but I'm telling you, it happened.) For a bunch of reasons, I've been around you for the majority of your waking hours and it's been a blast. You're really fun to play with, and you've already exhibited a sly sense of humor. Just today, after drinking most of your bottle, you offered some to me. When I pretended to take a few swigs, you laughed and laughed, then offered me another drink.

You've also shown amazing focus for a person your age... sometimes to the dismay of your parents. When you want a toy or a magazine or a remote control or whatever nothing will stop you. Attempts to distract or remove you are futile. You can be so persistent, we've taken to calling you "Tenacious E."

This combination of joy, humor, and persistence has be intrigued about your future. You've got an unusual mix of personality traits, and if they continue through adulthood, they will serve you well. I hope they continue. I really like your personality.

So what can I offer you this year in the way of birthday wishes? I guess it would be that you can take this joy and enthusiasm you have for everything around you and translate it into your adult life. This is no small task. It's much easier to be happy as a baby than as an adult. But seeing how you've been over the first year of your life, I'm inclined to believe that happy is your default setting. May it be so throughout your life. And may you always have that little sparkle in your eye that seems to say you're up to some trouble... but not too much trouble.

Happy birthday, Eliza. Your mom and I love you so much. We're utterly at a loss to put it in words, but my gosh, what a beautiful person you are. Stay sweet.

--Dad

THE TROLOLO GUY RETURNS

2010-09-30T14:54:00.000-07:00

And apparently Russian television hasn't gotten any less weird 20 years after the fall of Communism...

SOME PHOTOS

2010-08-31T22:13:00.000-07:00

Home for more than a month, and I've not posted a single image from this past visit to the Faroes. I am a bad, bad person.

So please enjoy these two collections of mostly unsorted photos, there's about 200 of them. So if you can't have quality, at least you'll get quantity:

Gallery 1
Gallery 2

FAROE FRIDAY: BUT WHO'S COUNTING?

2010-07-02T23:32:00.000-07:00

While this space has gone largely dormant this year, I have been doing other things, including continuing my series of podcasts on the Faroe Islands, that can be heard by going to iTunes and searching for "Faroe Islands Podcast" or by going to http://faroepodcast.blogspot.com.

So I've not been ignoring my beloved Faroe Islands, despite my lack of Faroe Friday posts in the last several months. And there's big news on that front as well. In just a few days, I'll be traveling to the Faroe Islands again. I'll be gathering more information for future podcasts, and taking lots of mediocre pictures as well.

When do you leave? Funny you should ask. I've installed a countdown clock on my sidebar that will hit zero when my first flight takes off on Tuesday. (Despite how it looks, my trip will not start in Salem, that's just how the program denotes the time zone the countdown starts in. Confusing, I know, but there's nothing I can do about it now.)

So check back in this spot over the next week or two and I'll post updates from the Faroes and pictures and anything else I can find.

Hope you're all well. I know I really need to post more here.

STARR'S MEMORIAL AND OBIT

2010-06-09T13:43:00.000-07:00

In response to questions about Starr's memorial service and the whole flowers v. donation issue, below is the obituary that will run this week. If you have any questions, leave them in the "comments" section and I'll make sure they get answered.

Herbert Starr Curtis, Starr to those who had the pleasure of knowing him, passed away on June 7, 2010 at his home in Phoenix, Arizona. He was survived by his sister Gail Gatterburg, his wife, Judy, their five children, Jesse, Julie, Christian, Nathaniel, and Maren, and 10.5 grandchildren, all of whom are very grateful for the time we had with him. The visitation will be held at 9am and Memorial Service will be held at 10am at the LDS Church on 4225 N. 56th St., Phoenix AZ. Donations in his name may be made to the Arizona Trail Association (www.aztrail.org/memorial_donations.html ) or Project Wet, a water resources education (www.projectwet.org ) or 1001 West Oak, Ste. 210, Bozeman, MT 59715

REMEMBERING STARR

2010-06-07T22:21:00.000-07:00

The phone rang at about 10 this morning. It was my mother-in-law, Judy, who immediately got down to the business of what was to be a terrible phone call.

“Starr is dead.”

The news was so quick and so abrupt it took several moments to process what I had just heard. This didn’t seem possible. My father-in-law is a healthy and active guy. He hikes the Grand Canyon. He eats right. He stays active. There’s no way this can possibly be true. But it’s true. He had a heart attack in his sleep and never woke up.

I met Starr 11 years ago when I turned up on his doorstep for the obligatory I’m-the-guy-dating-your-daughter-and-things-are-getting-serious-enough-that-I-should-meet-the-parents dinner. I had been warned that he might try to scare me off by acting a little odd. Sure enough, he greeted me at the door with a copy of “Emily Posts’ Guide to Weddings.” He handed it to me and said, “read up.” What I would learn later is that Starr wasn’t acting a little odd to put me off. Turns out, Starr was just a little odd, no matter what. My dating his daughter didn’t really enter into the equation.

I have many reasons to be eternally grateful for Starr and the life he lived. There are the obvious ones, of course. He is the father of the woman I love. Without him, many of the greatest joys of my life wouldn’t have happened. He also quickly became a willing and effective co-conspirator at Curtis family gatherings. When all the family togetherness would get to be a bit much, Starr would offer a convenient excuse to run off somewhere, be it a local pizza place or a Krispy Kreme with the hot light still on.

But there are more subtle ways that Starr’s life made mine better. When I was first dating Julie, I couldn’t understand why a poised, intelligent, and accomplished person like her would go out with a goofball like me. But after spending some time with Starr, I started to understand why. His off-kilter personality helped increase Julie’s tolerance for the unusual. When I came along, it was nothing odder than what she had seen before.

It was once fashionable to make fun of one’s in-laws, to claim they were nasty or boring or otherwise objectionable. I have always considered myself lucky to have in-laws that I truly enjoy being around. In April, Starr and I drove from Oregon to Arizona with two obnoxious 3-year-olds in the back seat. Starr turned out to be the ideal travel companion, full of fun, intelligent, and interesting conversation… and he always let me choose the radio station.

We left Arizona in early May, and that was the last time I saw Starr. I don’t really recall what I said… probably “thank you” for driving with the kids, maybe I thanked him for the generosity and hospitality he always showed when I visited. At the time, it was a trivial exchange, nothing worth really paying attention to.

Had I known it would be the last time I spoke with him, I probably would have tried to convey more. I would have thanked him for the kindness he showed me as a newcomer to his family. I would have thanked him for infusing his daughter with a sense of whimsy that delights me every day. I’m sure I would have told him I loved him. It’s not something we said to each other much, although it was pretty much implied.

Tonight I also mourn the loss my children will feel once they fully understand what’s going on. Nate and Will are just shy of their 4th birthday and are just starting to understand how fun a grandpa can be. Just last week, they were asking when they would get to see Grandpa Starr again. I wish they could have gotten to know him better. I wish they would have gotten old enough to be allowed to play with Grandpa Starr’s hand crank electric generator. I also wish Eliza were old enough to have some memories of her Grandpa Starr. I take some comfort in knowing that they did get to meet and that they liked each other very much. I only wish that relationship had a chance to grow and blossom into something even more beautiful.

At times like these, the Mormon prohibition on alcohol seems especially cruel. It really would be handy to have something that would both loosen the tongue and deaden the pain. For whatever reason, this seems like the kind of death that should be marked by people sitting around a bottle of whiskey, each offering a toast in memory of Starr. Alas, we’re Mormon and we just don’t roll like that.

But in that spirit, allow me to raise my (pretend) shot of whiskey into the air and say the following:

Here’s to Herbert Starr Curtis. He was a good man. He did good things, things that made people happy. And in the family that remains, he has left a legacy of beauty and joy that will continue to make others happy for many years to come.

Bottoms up.

BOUNCE

2010-05-31T23:03:00.000-07:00

Please, nobody hit me. I've got a little something... A little something?

ELIZA MEETS ELIZA

2010-04-01T11:48:00.001-07:00

We all freak out every time we see Eliza, because we think she's so cute. Apparently Eliza agrees with us:

YOU DON'T CARE ABOUT THIS

2010-03-07T22:28:00.000-08:00

And that's ok.

You don't care about this unless you're the grandparent of a 5-month-old girl and will watch ANYTHING that has her in it. You don't care about this unless you've been hounding me to post something with this particular granddaughter in it.

So here it is, a developmental milestone that's not all that big a deal, but is catnip to the grandparents. I give you, Eliza rolling over:

FAROE FRIDAY: FAST

2010-03-05T08:54:00.000-08:00

Getting back into the Faroe Friday scene, here's a video of time lapse photography taken in the Faroe Islands. It's beautiful stuff.

Føroyar (Faroe Islands) - September 2009 from Serge Maheu on Vimeo.

BABY STEPS

2010-02-25T21:56:00.000-08:00

So after an absence of several months, I'm tiptoeing back into the whole blogging thing. I'm still short of time for writing things, but you people really just want photos of people who aren't me, so let's start that way.

Yesterday everyone was tired, so we all took naps. (Everyone except Julie.) When it was time to wake up , nobody was really interested in that. When Julie came into the living room, she came upon this scene, which I swear wasn't posed... Will also had a hard time waking up and wasn't game for taking pictures...

And Nate refused to participate at all. So we built a wax figure of him and photographed that instead...

More to come. But if you want to see other stuff I'm doing when I'm not on this space, I am on the Twitter and doing a podcast about the Faroe Islands. But I'm really going to be better about this space.

Really.

REGULAR POSTING TO RESUME SOON...

2010-02-22T16:34:00.000-08:00

So how does that make you feel...?

I'M NOT DEAD

2010-01-31T23:48:00.001-08:00

I'm just resting.

CHRISTMAS CARD

2009-12-24T14:05:00.000-08:00

So this year we actually went to a professional photographer to get some pictures done and got a proper Christmas card made up. Of course, we didn't get them out on time. So to all our friends and family, the card is in the mail (or will be this Saturday). Until then, this will have to do.

Merry Christmas.

FAROE FRIDAY: MUSICAL MOMENT

2009-12-18T00:39:00.001-08:00

It's late at night on a Thursday and everyone has been enjoying an evening of good food and conversation. The host for the evening is Elin Heinesen. Around 2 in the morning, Elin picks up a guitar and starts to sing. Before coming to the Faroe Islands, I already knew Elin was an accomplished singer and musician. But to hear that voice in person... well... I'm not sure I was fully prepared for it. It's a voice that's clear and haunting and utterly enchanting. That short, impromptu concert was among the highlights of that trip.

Now I've received word that Elin, who's also an important member of our podcast team, is putting out an album early next year. The CD won't hit the shelves until January 15th, but you can go to this website, listen to some samples, and even place an advance order if you wish. I highly recommend it.

Listen to a sample, close your eyes, and you can almost imagine what it was like to be in that room on that special night.

MORMONS, MORMONS, MORMONS!

2009-12-16T00:57:00.000-08:00

So Orrin Hatch records a song for Hanukkah, so Max Wienberg decides to write a song for the Mormons...

FAROE FRIDAY: EARWORM EDITION

2009-12-05T00:48:00.000-08:00

So there's this band in the Faroe Islands called Frændur and people say they're the most popular band ever in that country. They've been around for 25 years and had a string of hits in the 1980s. And that's just about all I know about them. Information about Frændur is extremely difficult to find in English.

But I did find this video. It's recorded on someone's cell phone or something like that, so it's hardly a polished music video. But it gives a pretty good idea of why these guys have been so popular for so long: they write really catchy songs. I don't understand a word of Faroese and I have no idea what this song is about, but I can't stop singing it.

So listen and enjoy, but be warned, this may be habit forming:

LEVELS OF AWESOME

2009-12-02T00:52:00.000-08:00

I've been out of the journalism game for about a year, and my desire to return wanes each day. But today that just might of changed. Someone forwarded me a news item from Taiwan.

Actually, it's news from the United States, specifically about Tiger Woods, his wife and whatever happened during that car accident he had. But this version of the story is put together by a Taiwanese newspaper called "The Apple" and includes computer animated recreations of what MAY have happened between Tiger and his wife that night. If we can have news like this over here, I want back in. Now!

SO WHAT HAVE WE LEARNED?

2009-11-30T10:37:00.000-08:00

So, it’s the 30th of November and this is the 30th post of the month. And that means I’ve actually succeeded in posting every day in November. While this is the third year I’ve taken this challenge, the task seems a little more daunting this year. I’ve got a newborn daughter and increasing demands on my time. Furthermore, this blog was almost completely dormant for about two months this year. So I wanted to see if I could post something every day, and if those posts could mostly be original pieces of writing.

For the most part, it worked. I wrote a lot more stuff than I usually would and came closer to finding my voice (to use a term I hate) during this new phase of my life. Turns out, I love complaining about my children. Who knew?

And what now? The fact is, I can’t really keep posting every day. There’s sleep I need to get and a marriage I need to keep afloat and a podcast to produce and kids with butts that won’t wipe themselves. Writing every day here just isn’t something that I can do right now. But I can say that I’ll write more… more than I did before this month. So that’s a good thing.

Now if you’ll excuse me, there are bags of human poop I need to remove from our home.

UNIVERSITY CHALLENGE

2009-11-29T02:10:00.000-08:00

Today, a little British comedy featuring future legends Stephen Fry, Hugh Laurie, Ben Elton, and Emma Thompson. Oh yes, and the cast of "The Young Ones."

BAD IDEAS FROM THE INTERNET

2009-11-28T15:28:00.000-08:00

More proof that a TV station with an electronic billboard and a Twitter account can be a dangerous thing.

Somebody got the idea to link the Twitter account and the billboard so the billboard would show the latest Twitter headline. And they ended up with this...

Not surprisingly, some people have been suspended over this. You can read the full story here.

FAROE FRIDAY: MEMORIES

2009-11-27T10:55:00.000-08:00

Short memory of the Faroes:

It’s late Friday night. Actually, it’s Saturday morning, about 2:30 or so. I’m at the G! Festival listening to some techno DJ spin tunes at the dance area. It was my first day at the festival, which is staged on a beach at the end of a fjord. On one side of the beach, jagged green mountains plunge directly into the black waters of the North Sea. Despite the early hour, the morning sun is starting to near the horizon, casting an orange light on the mountains and the water and during the sky on the opposite side a deep purple.

I don’t know this DJ’s name, but he’s good. He’s spinning a really fun mix. I’m still adjusting to the time change, so I’m too tired to dance, but I’m happy just to stand by myself and take in the scene before me.

A guy walks up to me. He’s Korean-American and recognizes me from the podcast I produce. He asks me, “so what do you think of all this?”

I look around me, at this funky little village, at the beautiful people dancing all around me, at the free light show playing out on the hillsides. Then I listen for a few more seconds to the awesome music that’s washing over me. I turn back to him and say this:

“Right here, right now, this is the best place on earth. This place, these people, this music… there is nobody in the world that has it better than you and me right now. I’ll accept that there may be somebody somewhere who has it almost as good. But nobody has it better than us. Nobody. Don’t ever forget this… right now. For a few moments, you were in the best place on earth.”

He nods, gives me a hug, and walks away. I go back to listening to the music.

THANKFULNESS

2009-11-26T00:50:00.001-08:00

What am I thankful for? Let me count...

One.
Two.

Three.

Four.

Five.

Julie counts twice. After all, she is Julie.

Happy Thanksgiving to all.

(Note: These photos aren't even remotely current.)

JIMMY DOES NEIL DOES FRESH PRINCE

2009-11-25T14:23:00.000-08:00

Jimmy Fallon doing a spooky-good impersonation of Neil Young singing the theme from "Fresh Prince of Bel Air."

CAREER CRIMINAL

2009-11-24T15:51:00.001-08:00

Earlier this week, I shared the sad story of a lovely little boy who turned into a pathological liar/professional actor. Because Will was the subject of that post, you may have inferred that Nate is the twin that has decided to fly straight. But you’d be wrong.

Instead, Nate has descended into a life of crime that has resulted in him spending a lot of time in the big house (his bedroom, for the purpose of “time out.”). While Will sticks to the elaborate hoax designed to raise money for insurance companies, Nate is more interested in petty theft (from his brother), protection rackets (protecting his toys from his brother), and Rebel Without a Cause-style rule flouting.

Most troubling is how comfortable Nate is living inside the criminal justice system. Yesterday, he was naughty at preschool, and the penalty was that he had to go straight to naptime when he came home and couldn’t watch any Elmo. We got home and Will ran to the TV so he could watch, and I directed Nate towards his bedroom so he could start serving his punishment. Rather than yelling or screaming, he just took off his shoes and crawled into bed. Then he pointed to the humidifier, which we use to create white noise while the boys sleep. He wanted to make sure I had turned it on before I left him there. Then Nate picked up a book and went off into his own world.

A similar thing happened later that night. Nate and Will had been in bed for about an hour, when I hear the light turn on in their room. We’ve had a lot of problems with lights being turned on and marathon roughhousing sessions taking place after the little guys have been put to bed. And when I come in to stop the riot, they just laugh and smile. So we’ve implemented a new policy: any time things get so out of hand that I have to come to their bedroom to break things up, I walk out with a favorite toy of theirs. It can be harsh, but it usually stops the uprising in its tracks.

So I hear the light turn on and I go to Nate and Will’s room put down the rebellion. When I arrive, Nate doesn’t even look up from his book. He just holds up his favorite toy so I could more easily retrieve it. Then, as I left the room, Nate took one final drag off his cigarette, marked another day off his calendar with a pocket knife, and flipped me the middle finger.

Clearly I’m going to need to find new forms of punishment.

HEE HAW! A COUNTRY MUSIC PODCAST!

2009-11-23T02:46:00.000-08:00

Nobody is more surprised than me.

I produce a podcast about the Faroe Islands, and now know that there is a thriving country music scene there. In this podcast I speak with an American musician and composer who has helped produce Faroese country albums for the past 20 years.

You can listen on our blog page : http://faroepodcast.blogspot.com/ or search iTunes for "Faroe Islands Podcast."

Or you can just download the file directly here:

http://media.libsyn.com/media/faroepodcast/Podcast_32.mp3

OUR BUDDING SOCIOPATH

2009-11-22T10:47:00.000-08:00

On a Saturday afternoon about a week ago, Will sat in his highchair and exclaimed, "uh, oh!" He had been eating lunch, but now he was clutching his nostril with a concerned look. After a little bit of questioning, he said he had stuffed a raisin up his nose. I grabbed a flashlight and could, indeed, see something dark shoved deep up his right nostril. It was up there pretty far, though, and our tweezers had sharp edges that could easily cut the inside of Will's nose.

About that time, I remembered something a paramedic once told me about what can happen to dried fruit when it's in a humid environment and how that can eventually block airways. After consulting with a nurse friend of ours (Hi, Ronnie!) we loaded Will up in the car and took him to the doctor's office.

Luckily for us, our pediatrician actually has Saturday office hours. Will strode into the office and declared, "I have a raisin in my nose." We paid our $20 co-pay and moments later, a doctor with remarkable skills removed the raisin in a split second. I took will back out to the car, gave him a big hug, and told him how scary that was and how I was glad he was OK. I hoped he had learned his lesson.

He had, just not the right lesson.

It's Saturday night, last night, and Will is sitting in his highchair. When our backs are turned, we hear, "uh, oh" from Will, and he's grasping at his nose. "Will put goldfish in nose!"

AGAIN? YOU SHOVED SOMETHING UP YOUR NOSE AGAIN? OH, COME ON KID! YOU ACT REALLY SMART, BUT THAT'S JUST ABOUT THE STUPIDEST THING I'VE EVER HEARD!

Instead of delivering that rant, I grab a flashlight and peered up his nose. There is something orange lodged deep up there. All the doctor's offices are closed, so this time we have to go to the emergency room. We bundle up Will and take him out to the car. But something seems odd as Will waves goodbye to his brother Nate, who was starting to cry because he isn't getting to go on the car ride with Daddy. Will was smiling broadly. We get into the car and Will joyfully declares, "We're going to the doctor!"

We arrive at the ER, march up to the desk, pay our $75 co-pay and will shouts, "I have a goldfish up my nose!"

We wait, and wait, and wait. Will bounces off the waiting room walls and points out which light bulbs have burned out and asking me to fix them. He asks to play games and read stories. He's having the time of his life.

We are eventually ushered into a room where we wait some more and fill out forms and wait some more and Will is starting to grow tired and we wait some more and someone comes in to check that we're insured and we wait some more. After about 30 minutes in the room, a doctor comes in and looks into Will's nose.

"Which nostril is the goldfish in?" the doctor asks.

"The right," I say, as Will points to his left nostril.

The doctor furrows her eyebrows and checks both, then wipes off her lens, and checks again. She pinches Will's upper nose and looks again.

After a few more moments, she was ready with her diagnosis: your son is a liar.

That's right, there is absolutely no evidence of a foreign object being shoved up Will's nose. That orange thing I saw with the flashlight a few hours earlier? Most likely a booger. On the drive home, Will confesses to the whole thing.

Now it's Sunday and we're still dealing with the reality that we either have an Oscar-worthy actor on our hands or a pathological liar. Of course, there is a lot of overlap in those categories.

Needless to say, he's grounded until he's 25.

IF I RAN MY OWN CHURCH...

2009-11-21T17:40:00.000-08:00

FAROE FRIDAY: RIDE 'EM, KOVBOY

2009-11-20T13:22:00.000-08:00

This week's Faroe Friday post concerns Kovboy Films. Kovboy (pronounced, I'm assuming, "cowboy") is an ad agency that produces some really fun stuff. You can see their portfolio by clicking the link above. They've also shot a series of short videos about the Faroe Islands. Many appear to be shot in HD, and they're quite beautiful.

So here's an example of what they're doing, and you can see other videos in the series by checking out their YouTube channel.

ENVIRONMENTALLY UNFRIENDLY

2009-11-19T13:47:00.000-08:00

For most of my adult life, I’ve considered myself somewhat eco friendly. I recycle and don’t drive an SUV and I don’t dump nuclear waste down the storm drains or anything like that. Indeed, I’m all about Feeding the Children and Saving the Whales and Feeding the Children to the Whales.

However, I’m starting to reconsider all that.

You see, the major motivation for being environmentally responsible, apart from liberal guilt, is your children. I’ve got somewhere between 40 to 60 years left on this planet and even if I spent the whole time in an idling Hummer, I couldn’t do enough damage to the planet to affect me. But there’s a chance I could do enough damage to impact the earth in my kid’s lifetime. So we crusty old people sacrifice a little bit so there will be something leftover for our kids.

But not I’m starting to think that our kids are, in fact, the problem. Let’s start with Eliza. In the six short weeks she has been alive, she’s become one of the biggest methane producers in all if Oregon. Methane, as I’m sure you know, it just about the most potent greenhouse gas out there. Much, much worse than carbon dioxide. She wears disposable diapers, which aren’t good for the environment, but I guess that’s my fault. But she craps in such a way as to ensure that we use twice as many as we should. For instance, when we change her diaper, she holds a little poop back until we have placed the new diaper underneath her. Then she lets it go. She’s clearly doing this on purpose.

The biggest offenders, however, are Nate and Will (pictured above). They are major methane emitters as well, but that’s just the start. Our little guys aren’t happy unless they are wasting as much electricity and water as possible. Before they can sit down for dinner, they have to make sure every light in the house is turned on. The ceiling fan on the outside porch must also be on. I have no idea why.

Toilet flushing is also a hobby for Nate and Will. As soon as they could walk, they little guys were in the bathroom flushing the toilet. They love flushing that toilet. They’re in the process of being toilet trained. Nate and Will only pee in the toilet, the poo still goes in a diaper, which goes into a landfill, which is really bad for the environment.

So anyway, an ideal day for Nate and Will would involve turning on every light in the house, then repeatedly flushing the toilet while stuffing the commode with toilet paper taken from old growth rainforest… then afterwards, clubbing a baby seal to death with the carcass of a komodo dragon.

My point is this: my kids really hate the environment, so why am I trying to preserve it for them? If anything, we should try to destroy the planet together. It would be a shame if they got to destroy the planet after I was dead. That’s really something you should experience as a family.

FISH SLAPPING

2009-11-18T00:37:00.000-08:00

I'm not feeling well this evening, so I'll have to forgo writing tonight. Instead, please enjoy some of the 15 funniest seconds committed to film... the Fish Slapping Dance.

TOLLAK HANSEN: COMING TO AMERICA

2009-11-17T00:12:00.000-08:00

Back when I first started writing about the Faroe Islands about two years ago, I made it known that I wanted to have people from the Faroe Islands read and comment on this blog. A few weeks later, a person using the handle "Faroe Man" left a short message on one of my posts.

From those humble beginnings, a friendship was built. We started collaborating on a podcast, and he eventually hosted me when I visited the Faroes this past summer and is working to make another possible visit happen next summer.

So it is with great joy that I announce that Tollak will wash up on the shores of America in a few short weeks. He's going to Washington DC to write about... something. I'm not quite sure what he's writing about, but that's not really the point. The point is that he's coming to America, which is something he's wanted to do for some time.

I've really wanted to return the favor Tollak paid me by showing him around the US. But when you live in a country that stretches across an entire continent, that's not always so easy. I'm about 3,000 miles from DC, and abandoning a wife with a newborn child for a weekend just isn't an option right now.

But I will send my best wishes, and some tips on things to do, and hope that we can cross paths in America sometime in the near future.

Congratulations, Tollak.

SOME SAME

2009-11-16T01:06:00.000-08:00

Some people say all newborn babies look alike, and some also believe that all baby photos are the same too. What a foolish notion this is. Check out this photo of Eliza. A simple photo of her in one of her Sunday dresses. But now look at what else we have...

In this one, you can see her legs, and part of my shoes. See? Completely different. Now, look at this picture...

Ok, that may actually be the same photo downloaded twice. Computers! What are you going to do about them? But I think you'll agree that this picture is qutie different...

A stunning closeup that reveals Eliza's blue eyes... and that dry patch of skin above her eyes. Now in the photo below, Eliza is doing her impression of those 1930s monster movies.

Change that just a little bit... and she's flashing a gang sign...

I think these last two photos show just how different similar images can be. Here we have Eliza on her blanket looking cute...

And this, well... this is just perfection.

LL COOL J

2009-11-15T01:31:00.000-08:00

A week or so I posted some old school hip hop, so I thought I'd post some more.

In 1987, I was watching Saturday Night Live. Sean Penn (who at the time was married to Madonna) was the host and did a bunch of pretty funny skits. Then, about 40 minutes in, this came on. LL Cool J wasn't the first rap act to appear on SNL, that was actually the Funky 4+1 More in 1981. But when you look at the audience, it was obvious they hadn't seen much of this kind of thing.

Despite the tepid response, LL still managed to blow the roof off 30 Rock that night. The audio is crap on this clip, but it's still exciting to see when hip hop was still new and exciting and desperate to prove they deserved the respect afforded to rock artists.

CHURCH SIGNS RETURN

2009-11-14T02:11:00.001-08:00

The church sign action around Medford has been terrible. As a matter of fact, one church has actually taken their sign down. For shame.

But the church on Main street sometimes still has something worthwhile. Last week, their sign featured this gem, prompting the question: "But what if my problem is that I have a pocket with a hole in it?" Food for thought.

FAROE FRIDAY: FAROE ISLANDS REVIEW

2009-11-13T00:57:00.000-08:00

This week we give a big shout out and plug to a site run by a dear friend. The Faroe Islands Review has information about the Faroes in English and is sort of a clearinghouse for photos, stories, and videos about the islands. It also has a full archive of the Faroe Islands Podcast, featuring me.

So if you're interested in learning more about the Faroes, the Review is a good place to start.

This week's Faroe Photo is of Kirkjubøur. The village is considered the spiritual center of the Faroes. It is the site of three churches (one still intact), some of which date back to the middle ages. There's also a home that has been occupied by a single family for 17 generations.

It's a beautiful place. I've been there. So there.

ARGUMENT

2009-11-12T01:52:00.000-08:00

I was going to write some lofty dispatch on corporate greed, and I'm certain I will before the month is up. But it's late and I'm tired, so instead I'll offer up one of my favorite Monty Python sketches: Argument Clinic.

THANKS, VETS

2009-11-11T02:00:00.001-08:00

I’ve not had much contact with the military in my life. I’ve got an uncle who reached a very high rank in the Marines, and my grandfathers both served in the military during World War Two. But other than that, I’d not spoken with many people who served in the military.

One notable exception was when I was living in San Diego as a Mormon missionary. I had a long conversation with a sailor in the Navy. I remember asking him about anti-military protestors (we weren’t at war back then) and how they affected their morale. He said they didn’t bother him at all. As a matter of fact, he was happy those people were able to express their opinions in a country where dissent was tolerated and sometimes even encouraged. “So even if they don’t like me, the freedom to express that is my gift to them,” he said.

That was over 20 years ago, but that conversation stuck with me. In the years since, I’ve spent a lot of time sitting in the comfort of my home or an office spouting off in print about my dissatisfactions with one government policy or another. Once I even went out on a warm Los Angeles afternoon and walked with thousands of protesters against the imminent invasion of Iraq.

But in my comfort, I’ve tried not to forget about the immense privilege granted me by those willing to serve their country. They put their lives on the line to create a safe space were peaceniks can march in the plaza or Glenn Beck can spin nutty theories on television, or comedians can merciless mock our elected leaders. It’s an amazing gift we’ve been given. That we can pretty much take that gift for granted is proof of how complete that gift is.

So on this Veteran’s Day, those of us who are fat and pampered need to find a way to say “thanks” to those who serve their country every day. Ideally, you could just find one to say “thanks” to in person. In lieu of that, perhaps the best thing we can do is take good care of those freedoms that people have fought so hard for.

It’s their job to fight for their country. It’s our job to make sure it’s a country worth fighting for.

(Thoughts also with the servicemen and women mourning the loss of their own this week.)

ONE MONTH IN

2009-11-10T00:47:00.000-08:00

She's been with us a month now, and it hardly seems longer than three weeks.

Eliza is growing fast. The doctor says she's gaining about 1.5 ounces per day. Supposedly that's good. So any photos we take are rendered inaccurate within moments.

But we took some photos on Sunday and are posting them as quickly as possible with the hopes that we can catch this brief moment before Eliza grows out of it.

Here we see Eliza in a pink outfit provided by none other than Patricia Hawkins. Accent jewelery from Pamela Rust.

And it appears if she has blue eyes. We'll consider that good news if it means she's got my vision.

Of course, there are two other blue-eyed persons in our home who have gotten neglected in the photos on this blog. But rest assured, there doing just fine...

Next to Eliza, Nate and Will really do seem like big boys. Also, Nate appears to be flipping off the camera, while Will is flashing a gang sign. And that's very adult.

CROSS-PROMOTION

2009-11-09T02:59:00.001-08:00

While I've promised myself that I would not devote space on this blog to promote my other blog and podcast, that's what I'm going to to anyway.

I do a podcast about the Faroe Islands and I've just completed another episode. You can listen to it on iTunes or at our blog page: http://faroepodcast.blogspot.com/.

Or you can download the file directly here:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/faroepodcast/Podcast_31.mp3

The podcast features audio of a trip to the Vestmanna bird cliffs (pictured above).

MORE MUSIC

2009-11-08T14:44:00.000-08:00

(Not the Canadian music channel)

Some readers of this blog seem to think that awesome old school rap is an unworthy subject for this blog. So here, here's an old piece of music that isn't rap.

(embedding disabled by pretentious artist)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gXU8kCrRHJY

JUICE CREW

2009-11-07T02:37:00.000-08:00

Nate and Will have been putting away a lot of juice lately, so I've started calling them the "Juice Crew." And that's put me in the mood to listen to listening to something from the Queensbridge all-star rap group.

So here's The Symphony. This track is almost 20 years old, but it still feels fresh to me. And check out the woman who walks on as eye candy at about 4:30. She's wearing a sweater! These days, that sweater could be used to make 4,000 thongs for the eye candy in today's rap videos. Ah, I miss them old days.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSoXHUlwraU

FAROE FRIDAY: FINGER, WITCH'S

2009-11-06T00:34:00.000-08:00

Yes, it has been much too long since we've had a Faroe Friday post here, but I'm determined to do more on that front in the weeks to come.

Time time around, I thought I'd share a short story about one of my favorite places in the Faroes, the Witch's Finger. On my second day in the Faroes, Thomas, Tollak and I went to Tollak's home village to take a few pictures. While there, we went for a walk up a hill and down a narrow road. When we turned the corner, there was a the Witch's Finger. It's a rock formation with a name you don't really need explained to you. You know, it's a long skinny rock... looks like a finger.

It was stunning to see, and it was the perfect day to see it. The sun was out, so everything was in sharp focus. And it was clear, too. From where we stood, you could see no fewer than five islands. It was more beautiful than words can describe. More grand than any photos can convey.

So after taking some pictures and shooting some video, we just sat there on the grassy hillside. We sat and looked out at the water, and the crisp blue sky. We watched the ferry boats make their journeys from island to island. We watched the sheep grazing on perilous-looking cliffs above us. But mostly we just looked at the rocks as the sun slowly moved across the sky. The shades of green and the shadows would change along with the light.

We sat there a long time. More than an hour. It may have been closer to two hours, I'm not really sure. Because in that moment, time seemed to stop. I've done yoga a few times, but I've never been into meditation. I'm told it's really good for you, but I just can't clear out all the thoughts zipping around my head long enough to meditate.

This experience, this place, seemed to calm my mind in a way I've rarely felt. In that moment, I didn't want to be anywhere else in the world. All the schedules and snippets of conversation and loops of music that fill my head were gone. In their place was calm, peace, and the sound of waves lapping at the cliffs several hundred feet below.

Now I'm not a hippie or an outdoorsman or anyone who feels any special connection with nature. Quite frankly, I'm happy to stay inside. When I'm outside, my iPod can get wet. But sitting there, as the minutes passed, I felt (and I can't believe I'm even saying this) deeply connected with the landscape around me. It felt like I could just lay back and melt into the rocky hillside.

Who knows, if no one had come to get me, I might still be there today. I'm not, but I hope I will be again someday.

AND THE QUESTION WAS...

2009-11-05T02:14:00.000-08:00

"Mr. Cleese, British Comedy God and giver of all that is funny, you worked with your wife Connie Booth in Fawlty Towers. But between the first and second series, the two of you got divorced, yet you still wrote and performed on the show. How did that work out for you?"

He gave a long answer, but basically, they always had a good working relationship, but drove each other crazy when they lived together. That good working relationship survived the divorce, and Cleese and Booth remain friends to this day.

I'm almost ashamed to say that I actually skulked around the stage door waiting for John Cleese to emerge. I've been to hundreds concerts and other performances and I've never done anything like that before. But there a stood in the cold with a camera, pen, and DVD of "Life of Brian" in my hands, along with about a dozen other fans. After about 30 minutes, a roadie emerged and said, "Dude, he's gone. Left from another exit. He's already back at the hotel."

Oh well.

OFF TO SEE THE WIZARD

2009-11-04T01:10:00.000-08:00

Today is a special day. Today I get to see one of my idols. John Cleese is appearing in Eugene, and I’m going. Not only that, I’ve got a front row seat.

Needless to say, I’ve spent the past week in Depends, because I’ve been peeing myself with excitement. I’ve got almost every episode of Monty Python’s Flying Circus committed to memory, and I’m a huge fan of the thesaurus-intensive skits Cleese wrote with Graham Chapman.

I’m actually not sure what this performance will entail, but I’m told it’s pretty funny. After a one hour performance, there will be a 45 minute question and answer session. And this is what has me nervous. I’m right in the front row, so chances are good I’ll be able to ask a question if I want to. And I don’t know what to ask.

For periods of my life, I’ve made a living out of asking people questions, but what to ask your comedy idol? I thought of simply asking, “May I please have a hug?” But that seems like it may get me undue attention from security. I’ve also considered asking him about writing with Graham Chapman. But it seems a little rude to see someone perform and then ask about his deceased writing partner.

I have been known to choke before. I had a chance to ask Dave Barry a question in 1991, and all I really did was stutter and mention that my hometown newspaper was one of the first to carry his syndicated column.

So now I’ve got a 2 ½ hour drive up to Eugene to think of a question. Wish me luck.

PYTHON TREK

2009-11-03T01:27:00.000-08:00

The term is "nerdgasm."

The unedited audio from Holy Grail's "Camelot" sequence coupled with Star Trek footage. It takes a special kind of madness to put something like this together. I'm glad someone did.

STRANGER IN A STRANGE LAND

2009-11-02T01:01:00.000-08:00

Dave and Shannon are good people. It’s just that simple. You meet them and you immediately like them.

I met them in 2004. I had just moved to Texarkana to work for an NBC affiliate based in Shreveport. At that time, Shannon hosted the morning show and Dave was a sports reporter. They weren’t married, but had been dating since they were both students in Syracuse. I think Dave picked me out as a fellow upstate New York native (he was raised in Albany) and started talking with me during one of my first trips to the Shreveport mothership. Shannon was nice to me, too. She was the subject of one of my first assignments. She was speaking at Texarkana College and it was my job to shoot some video of it.

Over the year or so I lived in Texarkana, I’d see Dave or Shannon (they worked opposite shifts, so you’d rarely see them together) when I came into the station, and each experience I had with then made me like them even more. They were just good people, who were good at their jobs, and they were fun, too.

Eventually the two of them got married and sometime after that they moved to Minnesota. By then I had moved on to Oregon, but I tried to keep in track of them on their blog or on Facebook.

This week I checked their blog and found the news that Dave and Shannon are expecting their first child this spring. It’s just great news.

When Julie and I were awaiting our first kids, people would sometimes say, “You are going to be great parents.” While I appreciated the compliment, the comments actually annoyed me a bit. I mean seriously, how do they know that? They way I saw it, the jury was out. These people, as well intentioned as they were, really didn’t have enough information to figure out what kind of parent I would be.

So I’m a bit sheepish to say that, when I heard the news of Shannon and Dave’s impending arrival, I thought just one thing: they’re going to be the greatest parents.

But I’m making this judgment based on real life experience with these two. You see, during my 14 month stay in the Confederacy, I was a stranger in a strange land. I would look at the world around me and have nothing but questions. Why does everyone talk like they’re on The Dukes of Hazzard? What is a mudbug, and why is it on grits? Why do people want me to holler at them when a phone call would be a lot more effective? Despite my cluelessness, Dave and Shannon were always kind to me. Helped me feel like everything would be OK.

Now Dave and Shannon are preparing to welcome their own stranger in a strange land, and he/she (they’ve decided not to learn the gender… ever) will have his/her own questions. Why am I no longer floating in fluids? What’s with all this light? Why is there a bag of my own feces strapped to my butt?

And when that happens, I’ve no doubt this new little person will receive a welcome exponentially greater than the wonderful and warm treatment they gave to an idiot Yankee trying to adjust to the South.

Or in other words: congratulations Dave and Shannon. You’re going to be great parents.

NaBloPoMo, REALLY?

2009-11-01T02:13:00.000-08:00

For the past two Novembers, I've joined thousands to take the NaBloPoMo challenge. That's, the National Blog Posting Month challenge. The idea is that you post every day during the month of November.

I've been equal to the challenge in previous years, but this year I've got my doubts. You see, life is different now. We've got a baby daughter that's just a few weeks old and I'm always short on sleep and time. Furthermore, this here blog has been a rather neglected space lately.

It started in January when I launched a podcast and blog about the Faroe Islands. Suddenly, a lot of the spare time I used to use to write here was swallowed up producing the podcast. Most of the longer humor and political writing that used to appear here vanished. Then, as life got more busy following a summer trip to the Faroes, even the posting of photos and videos stopped. In late August and into September, more than a month passed without a single update. Since the arrival of Eliza, some baby photos have found their way to this space, but not much else.

So this year's NaBloPoMo is perhaps a fight for the future of this blog. Will I be able to revive it and keep this blog a going concern? I don't know. During the past two years I was pretty confident. This year... not so much.

Stay tuned...

ELIZA: PINK ON PINK

2009-10-27T00:36:00.000-07:00

So I've taken a LOT of complaints from people who are unhappy that I haven't posted any new photos of Eliza lately. I'm too tired to make snarky comment about that, so I'll just report that you're in luck. Julie was taking care of Eliza when she noticed her outfit matched her blanket...

So she started snapping pictures.

Since she was born, Eliza has added about 1 1/2 pounds of cuteness.

And maybe a few ounces of attitude as well.

Right now, we only ask two things of her: we want her to sleep and we want her to eat. Luckily for us, she's really good at doing both. She's also very talented at pooping while we're trying to change her diaper. But that's a whole other story.

So in short, we've decided to keep her. Papa, don't preach!

PYTHON STAGE

2009-10-17T20:43:00.000-07:00

Monty Python reunion filmed in NYC. Peeing my pants waiting for the 6 part documentary on IFC starting tomorrow.

TAKING ELIZA HOME

2009-10-13T22:15:00.000-07:00

After four days in a hospital, it was time to take Eliza home. So we dusted off one of the old car seat what Will used ands strapped her in.

And we dusted off Julie, too... she cleaned up nice...

Once home, little Eliza got to relax on her new favorite cushion.

And I got to enjoy my new job description.

But what was all this like for Eliza? It's hard to know exactly, but I tried to get an Eliza-eye view of the arrival in our home. So when we got into the garage, I held Eliza's car seat in one hand, and our little hand-held camera in the other. So now you can see what she saw when she came home.

Actually, you can see more than she saw. I think she was asleep for the whole thing...

MORE ELIZA

2009-10-10T21:35:00.000-07:00

Still having issues getting a clear image of little Eliza in her "baby friendly" environment. So all I can offer you today are a trio of dark and out-of-focus images. Hopefully the sassy tongue photo above is enough to make up for the lack of quality.

More photos of similar "quality" have been added at the facebook photo album.

Today's video is of even more limited appeal. I features Eliza doing absolutely nothing for two minutes. She sneezes at 1:16, so that's something. And, like the photos, the video is dark and the focus is somewhat dubious. It's here only because neither set of grandparents are here yet, and grandparents love to stare at their grandkids doing nothing. This one's for you, Mom...

INTRODUCING ELIZA

2009-10-09T20:09:00.001-07:00

So at 12:23 this afternoon, this arrives. This is Eliza Katherine Workman. She weighs 6 pounds, 14 ounces, and is just a little shy of 20 inches long. She's got a healthy head of dark hair.

And a healthy set of lungs...

She also presents a unique photography challenge. You see, Eliza has been born at a "baby friendly" hospital, which means, among other things, that it has really crappy lighting. So it's pretty hard to get good images of our new little girl.

All that napping in the dark doesn't help, either.

She's also been known to burrow herself inside a pile a blankets.

But despite these minor difficulties, we love our new daughter a lot.

Julie is fine after the surgery, and Nate and Will are excited to meet their new sister. That may be a few days off as the hospital currently isn't allowing anyone under 18 to visit (something about Swine Flu). But they've been happy to look at photos of Eliza and this short video.

The following video was an accident. I was trying to take a still photo and I had the camera on the wrong setting. It's only five seconds long and includes a scream from Eliza and then me trying to figure out how to turn the camera off. It's so stupid, that I wasn't going to post it here. However, Nate and Will love it. they've probably seen this little snip of video about 20 times already and would probably be watching it right now if I hadn't sent them to bed. So in honor of Nate and Will, here's a very short clip of Eliza.

We've put a few more photos online and you can see them here.

I've got to get back to the hospital now. The wifi there really doesn't work, so I'll only be able to check in every now and then. But thanks to you all for your thoughts and prayers. I'll post more stuff whenever I can.

LIVE, LOCAL, AND LATE-BREAKING

2009-10-09T01:09:00.000-07:00

If all goes as planned, Julie will have a baby girl at noon on Friday, October 9th. We will post photos and other info here as soon as possible afterwards.

For those of you who want the information even more quickly, check out my Twitter feed: http://www.twitter.com/matthewworkman

I'll post whatever I can as soon as I'm allowed near a cell phone.

Stay tuned...

NATE & WILL & THE BUS-CAR

2009-10-08T00:46:00.001-07:00

While I was off in the Faroe Islands last July, Nate and Will were in Arizona. While there, their primary mode of transportation was in their grandmother's minivan, or bus-car. This three week brush with suburban America left a huge impression on both our little boys. Since returning from Arizona, they have offered up literally hundreds of prayers concerning the bus-car.

(The term "bus-car" was coined by Will last year. He knew about buses and he knew about cars. When he saw our rental minivan, he simply said "bus-car!" The name stuck)

I don't toss out the estimate of "hundreds" lightly. Every day, Nate and Will offer up 3-8 prayers thanking God for their grandma's bus-car, and looking forward to the day when they have a bus car of their own.

So last Saturday, Julie and I went through the humiliating and degrading process of buying a car. We really had no choice. This new daughter is scheduled to arrive on Friday, and we don't have a car that can fit three car seats. So a minivan was going to happen one way or another.

And as we suffered through long and thoroughly horrible car buying trudge, Julie and I comforted ourselves with this single thought: Nate and Will are going to freak out when they see this. After all, we were about to prove to our little boys that God actually exists... and delivers minivans.

So on Sunday morning, we told them we had a big surprise for them and let them out to the garage. Will just stared at the ground, then looked up and the car and declared, "bus-car."

That's it. We drop a serious pile of money on the car of his dreams and all Will can think to say is "bus-car?" Come on. To make matters worse, Will gets into the car and immediately notices our Subaru out in the driveway. The Subaru used to live in the garage, but it's been kicked out onto the drive way in favor of the new minivan.

"Will's car getting wet!" You've got to me kidding me. He's worried about the old car? Moments later he asks for his old car back. You can actually see some of the exchange below and hear me try to sell him on the concept of this new vehicle.

Needless to say, I've learned my lesson about trying to purchase happiness for my two children. In the future, I'll only try to purchase happiness for myself.

FAROES GO LOCAL

2009-10-07T13:33:00.000-07:00

Faroe Islands makes the news in Medford, Oregon...

FAROE FRIDAY: FINAL PHOTO

2009-10-03T00:38:00.000-07:00

So I was in the Faroes just one day and I posted about 85 photos. A few days later, another 60 or so hit the web. Then two months passed. I had promised more photos, but never delivered.

Well, your wait is over. Here's a collection of 134 pictures taken by me, Thomas, and even Tollak. Looking at them again after being home for two months, I miss the place even more. I sincerely hope I can find a way to return in the near future.

Click here to see the photos.

NOT DEAD YET

2009-10-01T10:19:00.000-07:00

I’ve heard it from my dad, and from many friends, and from former coworkers. “What happened to your blog,” they say.

Well… I got busy?

Since returning from the Faroes in August, it has been an extremely busy time and all sorts of activities have crowded out my usual blog writing routine. Some of that time has been spent putting out podcasts on a more accelerated schedule. (To listen to the most recent one, search for “Faroe Islands Podcast on iTunes or listen on the audio player here.) I’ve also been, to use an expression from politics, spending more time with my family.

But I’ve got a short break in the action, so I thought I’d check in with an update and a promise to be better in the future.

Most of you have been missing photos of the little guys, so let’s get some of those out of the way right now. First, here’s Nate using his pig toy (that he’s pulled all the stuffing out of) as a beret.
Now here’s Will just being silly.

And the both of them hanging out in the living room.

These photos were taken in August, before the new haircuts. Those haircuts make Nate and Will really look like big boys. It’s exciting and sad all at the same time.

But they need to start looking like big boys, as they’ll have a little sister in about a week. The new child-to-be-named-later arrives next Friday. Julie can’t wait to have it out of her. I think I could probably wait another few weeks. After all, once it comes out, it’s my problem, too.

We’ve been asked a lot about names and I regret to say we’ve been very bad about drawing up a short list. Perhaps it’s the fact that we’ve already been through this process before and naming something just doesn’t have the thrill of the new. Perhaps it’s denial.

Whatever the case, I think I’ve come up with a solution to our naming problems. We wanted something that would have some historical significance, so I went back through my genealogy. I discovered that, with the exception of my mother, every woman on my side of the family is named “Grandma.”

So I’ve unilaterally decided to name our new daughter “Grandma.” How cool is that? Imagine the fun of holding a newborn child and saying, “this is our new baby Grandma!” And Nate and Will will certainly love this. They love their Grandmas. It seems logical that they’d transfer that love to a new baby sister with the same name.

Nate and Will aren’t potty trained and I’m sick of handling their crap. But that’s another story.

And for those of you who missed the Faroe Friday posts, I'll have a little something tomorrow. Really.

TAP, TAP, TAP

2009-09-28T15:59:00.000-07:00

Hello?

Is this thing on?

AN OPEN LETTER TO THE PEOPLE OF THE FAROE ISLANDS

2009-08-14T01:11:00.000-07:00

I’ve returned home after spending ten days in your country. I was there basically as your guest. My objective was to see the G! Festival and Ólavsøka and collect as much audio and video as I could for my podcast and other projects.

I knew I would see some spectacular landscapes and hear some great music, and my expectations were met or exceeded at nearly every turn. But I’m not sure I was prepared for the openness and kindness shown to me, a complete stranger in your country.

For a week and a half, you humored my stupid questions, tried not to roll your eyes as I locked car doors out of habit, and suppressed your smirks as I tentatively nibbled on my first bites of whale meat. You invited me into your homes to eat. You sat me down and told me stories of the recent past when there was no TV or radio in the Faroes. You played me your music in private concerts and massive sing-alongs. You told me about the sagas and legends that make up your history. You let me take part in some of your oldest traditions and were patient as I tried to master the steps of one of the simplest folk dances in the world. You made me feel at home even though I was on a tiny set of islands 8,000 miles from where I live.

In short, you were kind to me. And I was deeply moved by that kindness.

While you gave so much to me, you only asked one thing in return: you wanted to know why I was interested in your country and what I thought of it now that I was there.

I found the second question a bit odd at first. Who cares what I think? I’m just some guy. But then I remembered that I’m a loyal subscriber to The Economist because I’m interested in how foreigners view America. So perhaps an outsider is sometimes useful to help someone see something familiar in a new way.

With that in mind, I guess I should answer your question: what did I think of your country?

As you can probably already tell, I think it’s amazing. I think the geography is perhaps the most beautiful in the world, and the people are friendly in a way I’ve never seen anywhere else. And the pace of life there is something unique in the developed world. You have more time to talk to your friends and neighbors, more time to stop and notice how the colors on the mountains have changed now that the sun has changed positions, more time to think.

I’m sure you take these things pretty much for granted, just as everyone takes the good things about their home for granted. And I’m sure there are things about your home that drive you insane: the small size that can produce a claustrophobic feeling, the lack of big city zing. That’s understandable, but please never forget that you live in one of the most unique and distinct places on Earth. In a world that’s becoming more and more homogenized, you’ve found a way to engage the outside while still preserving what’s important to you: your language, history, and traditions.

I’ve been home from the Faroes for about two weeks now, and I’m still processing all I saw and heard while I was there. But let me at least say “thank you” to those of you who made me feel so welcome and so at home. I will never forget this experience.

Takk fyri. I hope we meet again soon, be it on your shores or on mine.

--Matt

FAROE FRIDAY: ON THE RADIO

2009-08-07T00:16:00.000-07:00

I'm alive and well and home from the Faroes. To answer some of your questions: Yes, it was just as amazing as I thought it would be and, yes, I miss it dearly now that I'm gone and, yes, I hope I can return in the near future.

While there, I was interviewed on the radio during the G! Festival. This week, I give you that unedited interview for your listening pleasure. You can download it from iTunes by searching for "Faroe Islands Podcast," or you can visit the podcast site at: http://faroepodcast.blogspot.com and listen on the audio player at the top of the page, or you can get the mp3 file directly here:
http://media.libsyn.com/media/faroepodcast/Podcast_21.mp3

As for me, I'm going back to bed. I've got a lot of sleep to catch up on. Those Faroese people, they don't stop.

MORE FAROE PHOTOS

2009-07-27T16:25:00.000-07:00

Busy at work on the Faroe Islands and having an amazing time. Another big, huge batch of photos has arrived:

http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=30357&id=1017703578&l=ba690f4e1a