Thursday, February 12, 2009



Okay, I'll admit it...I take immense pleasure out of catching people in awkward or embarrassing moments. I know...it's kind of mean spirited. But having had sooo many myself, I can always immediately empathize with the sufferer, and if I happen to catch some eye contact, I always give them that understanding "I've totally been there man" look.

One of my favorite acts to witness is a little something that I like to call "the sidewalk stumbler". These are the people, usually men, that you see tripping over their own feet while strutting their hardest mean walk down the street. I have seen this happen so many times, that I can usually predict how the victim will recover from the stumble, even before he makes his very calculated decision. But today I saw a phenomenon unlike any other...

Usually the stumbler is going to do one of two things...there's the "trip and jog", where the victim will stumble over his own foot and will immediately break into a light jog, as if he decided in that very moment that he really needed to increase his cardiovascular fitness. And then there's the "trip and terror", where the victim will lose his footing, and a look of sheer terror will creep across his face, as if he has just been subjected to an unimaginable atrocity. He will then look around to see who else saw the stumble with a frightfully perplexed look on his face .

Today, however, was a real treat. The stumbler, a young thugged-out man dressed in oversized clothing...stumbled on the sidewalk, teetered backwards as if he may fall, lifted his knee, and brought his Timberland encapsulated foot to the ground with a smack. He then proceeded to break into a variation of a stomp dance. The "dance" even had lyrics to go along with it, which he sang loudly as he stomped the remaining length of the block.

It was absolutely effin' brilliant.


Wednesday, February 4, 2009

Whats Love Got To Do With It??


Yesterday morning I woke up at 6am feeling very sprightly. Some mornings, when I'm feeling all sorts of well rested and content with life, I'll put my ipod on and will get ready for work while blaring music and dancing around the living room in my underwear. Yesterday was one of those mornings.

Tina Turner's "Whats Love Got To Do With It" was on, and I started to feel very VERY inspired...

Grabbing my hair brush, which also doubles as a microphone - I headed to the mirror in the living room to begin my performance. I was in the throes of belting the lyrics into the "mic", and shimmying a full body shimmy, when I looked over my shoulder and saw my landlord plus 2 of his landscape workers peering in the window behind me..laughing.

There are no words to describe the level of embarrassment felt in moments like these. These are the moments that, years later, while lying in bed trying to fall asleep, you'll think of, and the humiliation of it all will cause you to draw the covers over your head, again and again, and again.