Got Beeler?

I know I haven’t been blogging.

I’m not going to apologize.

It’s a conscious decision.

It’s simply a hiatus while some other things are in motion.

It’s radio silence.

My satori is this! Zen and the art of buttering bread. There’s no more knife. There’s no more bread. There’s no more butter. There is only a gesture which is repeated. A movement. Space. Emptiness!

Details as we learn them.

This Sunday I’ll be heading to Boulder for a conference. Here is my expectation of what is going to unfold (note that names have been barely changed as no one in this story is really innocent):

6:30 AM: Arrive at Newark Airport. Stop at TGI Friday’s for breakfast. Waitress offers me a beer. I respectfully decline.

7:25 AM: I board plane. Stewardess pulls me aside and says that she wants me to sit in first class because my original seat was between a large couple with a crying baby. I ponder and agree this is probably for the best.

7:26 AM: Little do I know that first class is filled with people going to the Boulder Beer Festival (they will find out later they are one week late [seriously, look it up]) and I’m sitting next to Amy Winehouse. The in-flight movie is Leaving Las Vegas. I’m getting restless.

7:27 AM: Amy offers me something she’s smuggled on board in her beehive hair. I respectfully decline.

7:43 AM: I order a water but the beer crowd has already started pounding them down. Amy passes out. I try to think about yield optimization and inventory processes.

7:47 AM: The beer crowd is getting rowdy. They put Amy Winehouse in the overhead compartment. I try to stay out of their way.

7:48 AM: In the process of stuffing Amy in, beer is spilled all over me. One single drop of beer touches my lips.

7:38:01 AM: It’s on.

8:23 AM: Using a combination of cue cards and napkin roses, I’ve commandeered the plane. We stop in Omaha to pick up more booze.

10:50 AM: Plane lands behind schedule, but no one on board cares. Someone coins the phrase ‘Air Beeler’. Undoubtedly a t-shirt is going to come out of this.

11:30 AM: On the shuttle bus from Denver to Boulder is part of the crew from the plane and Chuck Norris. Chuck and I spot a couple of bad guys on the side of the road. We kick their asses and continue on our way (note - might have been Steven Seagal, my memory is fuzzy).

12:00 PM: Arrive at the hotel. Find out my room isn’t ready, the dining room is closed, but the bar is open (this happened to me in Stowe). Bartender places a beer I haven’t ordered yet while I pull up a stool. I hope Bowen doesn’t see me.

12:01 PM: Bowen sees me. I don’t think my bloodshot eyes pull off the innocent look I attempt. I start to explain, but Bowen politely excuses himself. Whew.

12:05 PM: Koshar sits next to me at the bar. Koshar isn’t scheduled to be at this conference, but I’m making this up and I get to decide who sits next to me, dammit.

12:06 PM: I reconsider and decide it’s not Koshar but “Bad Nicole” who sits next to me. Much better.

12:10 PM: Others from the conference file into the bar, including one of the sponsors. Thankful that I don’t have to pay for my beer, I order another one.

Tuesday 3:42 AM: Black and I are arguing with a border patrol (country unknown) apparently trying to get through. I notice I’m holding a drink of what appears to be an absinthe/tequila shooter. Black continually bellows, “But this is Beeeeler”. When all seems lost, an officer appears and hearing who I am, let’s us through. We celebrate with tasty Nutty Bars. Wholesome goodness. Something tells us we’ve left someone behind (Newton or Ryan or both) probably rotting in a jail cell. But Beeler needs another absinthe/tequila shooter and they will have to wait.

Wednesday 11:33 PM: I wake to find I’m in an alleyway getting a tattoo that says “It’s all about the girls…and the guys…and the girls” with a guy with an eye patch wearing sunglasses. I decide it best to pass out again.

Thursday 5:51 PM: I find myself on a plane back to Newark. Everything is calm and I’m feeling clear headed and well rested. I notice that I have thorough notes from the conference on my lap. The in flight movie is a private screening of “The Watchmen”. I take a sip of my water only to find that it’s vodka.

Thursday 5:51:01 PM: It’s on.

This weekend’s plans are a little bit up in the air because of problems with my left foot, but that doesn’t mean it isn’t jam packed with events: we have guests, a trip to the beach, Lion King, etc. Let’s go right to the questions:

Q: What’s wrong with your foot?

A: Hurt like crazy Thursday morning when I woke up. I amused myself thinking it might be gout because that’s something rich people and geniuses get. However, upon researching the disease, I decided that’s not what I wanted:

(What gout feels like - and I’m glad I don’t have it)

Q: So, I’ll ask again: What’s wrong with your foot?

A: My doctor doesn’t know. He knows it isn’t Gout and he knows it isn’t broken.

Q: Beeler, you are dodging the question…

A: I spent Friday trying to get an appointment with a podiatrist (which turns out to be a foot doctor and not the opposite of a richdiatrist). Couldn’t get one. Very frustrating. I can tell you, by noon I was ready to stick my foot up someone’s ass!

Q: What is…
A: I don’t know.

Q: Will you be able to go to the Lion King?
A: No. The New Yorker called this Tony winning production now in it’s tenth year, “theater of the extraordinary. It’s like being in a dream awake.” the plan before my foot was even an issue was that I was staying home with the kids.

Q: Bitter, much?
A: You have no idea.

Q: Any blogging plans?
A: Well I just added a page for Ad Beeler which is coming up. My friend Mike is going to visit the site and so I’m considering changes to make it “Mike proof”. I set up a Got Beeler forum and I’m still trying to figure out why I can’t track traffic to the site.

That’s all the time for questions. Thank you.

I feel compelled to write yet I absolutely hate the process. That’s the conundrum of my writing career and why I started this blog - to hopefully free myself from that vicious cycle. I say this because I need to flush some things out of my system so I can get back on track. It isn’t that I haven’t been busy, I’ve just been tied up with distractions and dead end ideas.

The Distractions:

Something happened with my blog a week ago and I can’t track stats through Google or Wordpress. Stats is what I do - even if I’m not trying to have a heavily trafficked site, I gotta see the numbers! I’m still working on this.

A couple people said that registration hasn’t worked for them. That one is hard to fix and I’m wondering if I scrap comments in favor of a forum approach. Feel free to comment or if commenting isn’t working (because you can’t register) email me at Beeler at GotBeeler.com.

I posted a couple of things to www.urbandictionary.com to see if they would accept them. Not that they are the hip terms the young people use, but I thought they were worth submitting:

Improovisation (improve + improvisation): Making something better but not because you planned it.

Curmudgination: (Curmudgeon + Imagination): The results of an old person’s imagination, usually something misguided. Example: Grandpa buying robot insurance is the result of his curmudgination.

I also have been trying to think through a family page. I wanted to put together a page of the cast of characters that will appear in the blog - which would be my distorted representations of my family. This is all nice until I think about my nephew, Arran, who passed away a couple of years ago. I won’t exclude him but I struggle with the tone in which to write about his death and that’s been hard as those wounds are still fresh. One thing I am doing is setting up information for a charity in his name and contributing to it from things sold in the Beeler Shop.

The Beeler Shop is also an area that has been distracting me, trying to think through how I want to present that as well as get some of the products I want designed. Anyone who has some design skillz and wants to help make up some T-shirts, give me a holler.

The Dead End Ideas:

I’ve got a few ideas that I’ve spent way too much time trying to develop and I’m getting nowhere. My thought is if I push them out this way, I might ruin the joke, but I’ll hopefully flush it out of the system. If you got a direction to go with these ideas, feel free to share. It might help me save them:

Dead End Idea #1: A review of the Dark Knight where I ponder if based on Heath Ledger’s performance that the bar is now set that to get an Oscar or earn my respect, an actor has to die. The right writer could pull that one off - I tried and I can’t make it funny.

Dead End Idea #2: On the shows Dora the Explorer and Go, Diego, Go!, all the animals either speak English or Spanish - never any other languages. Seems to me that would be a problem for a biologist or zoo keeper who only spoke Japanese. There’s something there, but I can’t make it blog worthy.

Believe me, I’ve got more dead end ideas - these are the ones that have been tripping me up.

Anyway, my hope is that this piece of catharsis (that’s Greek for a really big dump) will get me back on track. I’ve got a Facebook post past due, Ad Beeler is coming up in a couple of weeks and I’ve got a few other things in the works. Now if I could only get the kids (and wife) to go to bed an hour earlier…

I always admired novelists. Their ability to create worlds from words always fascinated me and I considered literature the highest art form.

These days I can’t even look at a book. They seem so undisciplined with all those paragraphs and pages. All that character development and imagery. An author can write for months - if not years - and only produce one book. One stinking book!

These novelists pale in comparison to the true artistry of a Facebook status writer. Their chosen canvas allows them only 160 characters in which to weave their magic. They establish a ‘voice’ and then maintain and evolve it, updating these mini-manifestos sometimes multiple times a day. How these wordsmiths continue to do what they do without acclaim or recognition of any kind, only makes my admiration for their work greater.

So I have gathered together a list of the people who I think have mastered the art of the Facebook status update. They establish their own distinct style. They make the status their own. They offer a piece of themselves and infuse it with wit and with knowledge. It has nothing to do with how prolific they are - leave that to those Twitter people: a tweet is a dime store romance novel compared to a Facebook status masterpiece.

My Favorite Facebook Status Writers

Charles Smith: His style is ingenious. His updates consist of witty things his children say: “daddy, I want to play baseball when I grow up and be a free agent.” or “daddy, your knees are beautiful.” All of them funny and touching. As a father of three, I often think, “why can’t my kids give me material like that?”

Jack Smith: Jack is the master of the cultural reference. Whether it be a line from a poem, movie or show tune, he transforms it into Facebook status form with breathtaking ease. His statuses are like distilled Dennis Miller rants. My only criticism of Jack’s style is that it can be difficult to connect with him on an emotional level. “Jack’s bog is dood” was his status the other day. Bad meeting or existential crossroads? Or both? It’s unclear. Jack, update us on the real you!

While the rest of the people on my list deserve a write up of their own, I’m already guilty of ignoring what these people do so well: keeping it brief. These artists take the mundane update of where they are or what they are doing and routinely add a li’l somethin’ somethin’ to it. They make checking status updates every 5 minutes worthwhile:

Joe Territo
Christopher Clairmont
Colleen Stone
Christopher Root
Brian McAlister
The duo of Pooja Kapoor & Cynthia Butler

I’m also including everyone that works at Centro who through their status updates lead me to think that it’s a company mandate to have fun.

To those aspiring status updaters out there - these are the people to befriend and learn from. Don’t copy them exactly - that would be pretty creepy. Your Facebook status is your own and all it needs is a little thought. The next time you go to update your status and all you have is “I’m at work”, think what one of these masters might say and you’ll be on your way. Good luck! For me, I’m spending the rest of the day doing research on my next status update. I’ll keep you updated!

My wife read my blog post this morning. “That was very nice. I found a typo.”

I’m too devastated to find it. If someone could find the typo for me and comment, that would be great.

Sniff.

I hate you Tony Danza.

This Friday it’ll be ten years I’ve been married. Ten years. Unbelievable. How did I do it? Honestly, I’m sure the credit goes to my wife but as much as any husband can pretend to control his own destiny, I’ve come up with my list of secrets to a long, happy marriage. Results will vary.

Wake Up and Apologize

Every morning I wake up before my wife and I wait for her to open her eyes and I softly whisper to her, “I’m sorry. I apologize. I don’t know what I was thinking. You were right. I was wrong. I’ll do everything in my power to not let it happen again.”

Okay, I don’t actually do that - that’s just a bit of advice I received on my wedding day which is just too good not to pass on. That being said, whatever you can do to make sure every day is a fresh start is the only way to go and if that means apologizing first thing - do it.

Tony Danza Saved My Marriage

I work a lot at home and a number of years ago, I noticed my wife would continually interrupt me while I was working. Eventually, I would snap at her and we would begin to fight. This all came to a head the night she interrupted me to let me know that “Biography” was about Tony Danza. Nothing against Tony, but there are few things that I would stop doing to watch a show about Tony Danza. This was so over the top, it became our joke. Tony Danza soon became a code phrase that allowed us to say something serious (”pay attention to me”, “you’re bugging me”) in a non-confrontational way. No need to snap - just ask if Tony Danza is on TV and without fighting talk through what needs to be discussed.

I think if you can have code words or phrases like this, you can avoid a lot of unnecessary squabbling.

Scheduled Spontaneity

Men, we are creatures of habit and despite our best intentions, we will establish a routine and stick to it. So while others will tell you that you should changes things up once in a while - buy flowers, come home early, schedule a date night, etc. - I’m telling you that unless you schedule it ahead of time, you’re going to forget.

My suggestion is to use something like Google Calendar and pick some random days throughout the year and put down notes of things to do for your wife. I figure at least once a month is enough. Even if you don’t perform the task you set up, it’ll be a reminder to do something.

Now depending on your wife, you may or may not tell her about your calendar. I’m sure some wives will think it defeats the purpose. I think my wife knows me well enough to know I need a crutch like this and we can joke about it.

What I wouldn’t do is share the calendar with her. If by any chance you don’t follow through and she knows it, you’ll be in hot water.

Og Need Cave Time

I didn’t read the book, but I think the source is Men are From Mars, Women are From Venus which talks about men needing cave time when they first get home so they can adjust. This is a life saver. When I walk in the door from work, my children are like hungry piranha. My oldest son will do his best Cato impersonation attacking from some unforeseen direction. My little girl will go for the hug around the knees and my little boy will throw whatever is in his hands at me while yelling “Daddy” in the 140 decibel range. Home sweet home.

What I don’t have is my wife telling me about her day while I’m fending for my life. We set the rule a long time ago that she doesn’t spill her daily diary on me first thing and I don’t snap or pretend to listen. We make certain that we set a time every night to catch up on things. This allows me to pretend to listen in a more relaxed way.

Preemptive Strikes

This one will probably get me in trouble, but it’s obvious in our household that my wife does the majority of the chores. Would love to claim it’s 50/50 but it’s not. This is the arrangement my wife and I have come to and it works for us (I do wonder if she would agree). That being said, I make sure that if I sense things are piling up I act quickly to pick up some of the slack and if possible before she asks. Nothing impresses another person like doing something for them before they ask. It doesn’t have to be every day, but enough for her to notice.

Lie to Your Wife

Lie to your wife, but lie well. What I mean by that is that your wife will invariably put you in the position of asking your opinion on something that is a no win situation. “Do these leopard pattern stretch pants make me look fat?” (note - my wife never said this) is the kind of question that they don’t even ask prisoners in Guantanamo Bay.

There is only one way to survive: Answer quickly. Answer decisively. Lie if you have to.

Now here’s the catch. Lie every time, and your just as dead. My recommendation is to ask what your options are and use that added time to formulate an answer. Often the answer will be given to you and you are off the hook.

In conclusion, I think it’s readily apparent that I don’t know what I’m talking about and at the same time, I do. If I can keep my nose clean for a few more days, I’ll be married ten years. While none of the secrets I’ve shared may have actually helped keep my marriage strong, I guess the key is that I’ve put some thought into it and have done so every day for the last ten years. Maybe that’s the secret.

As far as the next ten years go, I haven’t a clue as to what to do.

Happy Anniversary Honey!

Well, it’s open - that doesn’t mean it’s actually finished. Ad Beeler is happening this year in Boulder, Colorado in August and if you’re going, you might be wondering what to wear:

 

Not sure whether or not to buy one? Consider the possible options:

You are the only one who buys one. You will be considered cool. Everyone will admire you.

Everyone else buys one. Do you want to be left out? I don’t think so.

It really is a no lose situation, unless of course you don’t buy. Holy cow. I just convinced myself to buy one. Gee Willickers, I think I’ll buy two! Check out the store and keep checking it as more stuff is on the way.

It has been a long time since I’ve been in a fight. Perhaps it’s because I’m older and wiser or it could be that I no longer yell, “I’m going to steal your girlfriend” in bars. That being said, the reasons why you shouldn’t even think of stepping up to me remain the same as they did back then:

My Scream: the easy way to describe it is to say I scream like a woman, but I don’t like to say it that way because (a) It’s sexist (and girls get hot for guys who aren’t sexist) (b) it’s worse than that. Think of the sound of a chinchilla with lungs full of helium being stepped on would make. One punch and every car alarm within a block will go off.

I Bleed A Lot: I gush blood. If you hit me, 100% certain you’ll never get the stains out of your shirt. Or your date’s clothes. Or anyone standing within 10 feet. You might slip in the pool of blood that quickly collects on the floor. At that point, you’ll wished you never touched me.

I Go Unconscious Quickly: Scientists can’t determine if I’m already out cold before actual contact or after. They do know all the systems in my body just shut down. It’s a jarring experience to watch me crumble to the floor. You’ll think you killed me. You might even start to cry. Is that anyway to impress your date or your friends?

This should give you something to think about the next time the idea of taking a swing at me crosses your mind. So the next time I publicly humiliate you for your lack of knowledge of Montana’s Governors (”this guy couldn’t tell you the difference between Ted Schwinden and Marc Racicot!”) or give your girl a napkin rose, I recommend you simply say, “Oh..that’s just Beeler”.