Radical Transparency

(in case the other blogs need a friend)

Just North Of Your Foot

Whenever we would use the egocentric system, the Guugu Yimithirr rely on cardinal directions. If they want you to move over on the car seat to make room, they’ll say “move a bit to the east.” To tell you where exactly they left something in your house, they’ll say, “I left it on the southern edge of the western table.” Or they would warn you to “look out for that big ant just north of your foot.” Even when shown a film on television, they gave descriptions of it based on the orientation of the screen. If the television was facing north, and a man on the screen was approaching, they said that he was “coming northward."

Amazing.

Thank you NY Times Mag.

And, if you guessed that "the egocentric system" was the one you use when you tell your friend, through the back bathroom door, to look for spare toilet paper behind the towels, in the cabinet to the left of the sink, you guessed right.

Tremulous And Tender

I went to an old friend's 30th birthday party on Friday night. A karaoke party. At a place called Prime Time Pub on Santa Monica Boulevard in Hollywood. The song of the night came early, while the bar's regulars still outnumbered the birthday partiers.

The singer's name, according to the MC, was Sunny. Mid-40s probably. Gold chain. Tight olive green v-neck tee shirt. Fully tattooed left arm. Cell phone holster hanging from his belt. Designer eyeglasses. And, as revealed by an earlier performance of Hotel California, less-than-native English language skillz. His preferred karaoke language, we guessed, was Korean.

But you know how sometimes accents disappear? Well, for five minutes on Friday night, Sunny was Michael Crawford.

The boldest karaoke song choice I've ever seen. And the most inspired performance.

(download)
The Music of the Night is track 7 on the original cast recording of The Phantom of the Opera. Sorry about that organ at the end. Scares me every time.

Gets

Happiness is the "Big Get." It is the elusive exclusive that will rocket you to fame and fortune. And it is a fiction. I am continually amazed, instead, at the power of the "Little Gets," the moments in the here-and-now that make up the rich stuff of life, not to mention the best material for a story. But I've been steeped in the Happiness Myth, so "consciousness" takes practice. And yet, being fully conscious of the Little Gets, both the pleasurable and painful variety, is its own reward.

Thank you Judy Muller. You make me think of Sir Walter Raleigh. Probably not exactly what you meant to conjure, but words are words.

(download)

I'm So Tired is track 10 on disc 1 of The White Album.

Coke, Hookers, and Political Correctness

Coke and hookers just made their first appearance on the Carrot Project Blog.

It's subtle, but they're there.

And, in the name of radical transparency (and maybe also for the love of all language and metaphor), they'll stay.

Until we find out that they've made someone feel uncomfortable.

And then we'll take them down. Because no joke should ever get in the way of being nice.

Beer and Whales

Max: [pauses, tastes, thinks, swallows] Hmmm. Not bad.
Danny: Max, don't pretend you know anything about beer.
Jon: There's a pretty awesome documentary called Beer Wars...
Zeeko: WHALE WARS!?!?!?

Apparently Whale Wars is a real thing. Which is very cool for whales. But which makes that moment of misunderstanding less awesome than if Zeeko's ears and imagination had transformed the words Beer Wars into a world combo / concept he'd never before that moment considered.

Overhearing the conversation (and never having heard of Whale Wars), I assumed the full awesomeness, smiled big, and quickly typed the dialogue into my phone.

And I post it anyway, even given my overassumption and overjournalistic reaction, because, if nothing else, it demonstrates the speed and unpredictability with which conversations turn.

A Long Way From Home

When I was immersed in Chinese and forbidden from English at Middlebury in summer 2003, I CRAVED this song.  I thought about it every day.  Sang it in my mind.  Tried not to.  Didn't want the English infiltrating my brain.  It was totally weird.  And I was totally weird for being the kid that took the language pledge to totally unnecessary extremes.

After our last morning of meetings with our professors, two of my friends and I stuffed our gear into The Silver Bullet (an old Chevy Corsica that had already been cinematically immortalized) and drove south for New York and eventually Pennsylvania.

I pushed play, and we listened.  Neither of them had heard it before, and we listened quietly for about a minute.  Then Jordan, from the backseat, broke the silence...

Reggae.  But without the Jamaicans.

Dreadlock Holiday is track 1 on Bloody Tourists.  And, while you're listening, I have a question: What does cricket have to do with reggae?

(download)