Springtime is back and so is Bob Ross Friday. It’s Friday afternoon and it’s beautiful outside – if you’re at work, you’re not actually working. Come kill 5 minutes with me, Bob, and his painting “Twin Falls.”
In this clip, Bob gets into the fan brush AND Titanium White in one swift motion. It’s almost too much to handle. Happy weekend, gang.
Ah, March Madness is upon us, that magical time when we root for the underdog, stare at the TV for 8-hour increments, and gleefully steal company time. It’s the return of Selection Sunday, the Boss Button, and hordes of spittle-screaming fans everywhere. Stars will be born, dreams will be broken, and Luther Vandross will again become relevant for one night. And I will continue to beat to death the rule of three within my sentence structure. All is well.
As a card-carrying sports fan, I love March Madness, just as I love the Super Bowl and the NBA Finals. Heck, I even love Major League Baseball’s opening day, even if I don’t particularly care for the 8 ½ monotonous months of ballgames that follow. These sorts of sports moments are what we cherish. But even the best sporting events come packaged with sports fans, and as you may know, sports fans have a tendency to be the worst.
Sports fans in a nutshell: loud, obnoxious, delusional, drunk. To help understand my feelings on the matter, I’ll point to a passage from an earlier sports-related musing on this very website:
…every single fan base will annoy you if you get close enough to them. I live in Colorado, and Broncos fans annoy the hell out of me, but that’s only because they surround me and their team has given them something to be loud about. If you’re a fan of any team, you’re annoying too. I’m annoying. We all suck. It’s just how it works.
It’s often pointed out that the word “fan” is derived from “fanatic.” These are people who make large emotional, temporal, and often financial investments into grown men playing catch. People who metaphorically live and die with the fortunes of teams to which they have no connection – in contests in which they have no control. People who literally yell at the TV.
And I’m one of them. Despite recognizing the obvious shortcomings of our kind, being a sports fan is way too fun to quit. Have you tried yelling at the TV? It is thoroughly enjoyable. As are the ballgames themselves, as long as you keep things in perspective. So instead, I try to focus on being a better sports fan. Here’s how:
It’s a game. It’s supposed to be fun. Make it fun. Support your team, joke with your friends, but don’t be a dick. A little good-natured razzing is fine – even encouraged – but calling a rival fan just to remind them their team lost and yours won and IN YOUR FACE BEYOTCH!!! makes you an annoying person people probably don’t want to be around very much. Because even if your team DID win – and hey, congrats! – you had nothing to do with it. Nothing. Which reminds me…
You love your team. You root for your team. But you are not part of your team, no matter what the marketing department tells you. Please do not refer to the team as “we,” unless you are a player, coach, or member of the support staff*. Yes, you buy jerseys and attend games. This does not make you part of the organization. Do you refer to United Airlines as “we” every time you fly somewhere? Of course not.
*One caveat: college sports. If you’re an alum of a school, it’s ALLOWABLE to use the collective “we” when discussing that school’s teams. Borderline, but allowable. $60k in tuition and crippling student debt earns that privilege. And after all, you were once a member of the same student body from which said team gets its semi-professional players student athletes.
“So, what do you like to do? What are your hobbies?”
“Well, I’m a really big Bills fan.”
First of all, I’m sorry. Second, no. Fandom is not a hobby. It’s not something you do. It’s observing other people do things. Be a fan by all means, but don’t only be a fan.
I often see fans on the internet write things like “Willie just isn’t getting it done,” as if the starting power forward for Kentucky is a close friend with whom they are on a first-name basis. In sports, last names are the way to go. Or full names, or even nicknames. I admit, in fits of passion, more than once I’ve been guilty of uttering an “Adrian” or a “Ricky,” but I’m working on it.
You get one hour after a loss to be pissed. Three if it’s the playoffs, the rest of the day if it’s a championship. Bitch, tweet, rage-drink, etc., for this amount of time, then move on. No use in letting something over which you have no control affect your state of mind longer than that.
“Somebody may beat me, but they’re going to have to bleed to do it.”
– Steve Prefontaine
Heard this quote from friend of the Lodge Chris Sheckman. A good reminder on focusing on what you can control. You can’t control how talented you are, or how naturally fast or strong you are, or what kind of genes your parents passed along. You CAN control your effort and how hard you work. You can make the other guy bleed.
You have to write. You may not like it, but it’s a fact of life – somewhere in your professional or personal life, you’re going to have to string a few sentences together in the hope of creating a coherent thought. For most of us, this occasion occurs almost every day (hello EMAIL!), and at the very least rears its head on select occasions (greeting cards, resumes, those our-family-year-in-review things people send out around Christmastime for some reason). Somewhere, you’re going to have to write (unless you’re a solitary mountain man living purely off the land, in which case welcome to Lodge and where did you find a computer?).
With this is mind, I’m compiling an ongoing list of simple tips to improve your writing, and make writing easier. None of these are original ideas – because I don’t have many of those – but aggregated knowledge I’ve found useful. They aim to help with both that unfinished sci fi epic on your desktop (i.e. fiction) and your resignation letter due to repeated HR violations (nonfiction).
This is perhaps the most common piece of writing advice I see, but also the most valuable. Nothing will take writing from average to good as quickly as getting rid of the fluff, just as nothing will derail a story as easily as adding some in.
This is somewhat counterintuitive, because we’ve been forced to meet arbitrary page numbers on school writing projects since the dawn of time. The paper has to be 8 pages? I only have 6. I guess I’ll add in some unnecessary information to get it there.
FIRST OF ALL, widen those margins and slightly increase the line spacing and font size, idiot. Second, no. Forget what your teacher told you. Your teacher was wrong. The mark of a good writer is one who can do more with less, and make every word count, not one that can make more words than others. I can throw together a 100,000-word novel by tomorrow and slap a guarantee on it – I do have spare time – and it will be terrible. Give me 50 good words, not 500 average words.
I’ll admit that preference plays a role here; some people like flowery, descriptive text, while others may prefer bare-bones prose. But in most cases, you lose nothing by being concise. Consider:
The full moon peeked behind the clouds for an instant, its silvery glow temporarily obscured in the night sky. Seeing the moment she had been waiting for, she pulled out her trusty .38 revolver from her purse, the same gun her grandfather had given her all those years ago. “Party’s over,” she said, her words echoing through the canyon like a boomerang. She slowly raised the gun and pulled the trigger twice, and the bullets tore through him like speeding daggers.
vs.
The moon peeked behind the clouds and she pulled out the .38 revolver. This was the moment. “Party’s over,” she said, and shot him in the face.
Sensationalized example? Totally. But I can’t count the time I’ve read real, published (or self-published) passages like the first one, and had to leave what I was doing to find somewhere to violently vomit. The point here is most readers aren’t stupid – they don’t need all the extra, over-the-top wordiness in the first example. The second example tells the same story in 1/3 of the time. The point of writing stories is to lead the reader to the place you want with necessary information, and then let them fill in the blanks. Trust they’re equipped to do so.
Hey Marge, it’s JT over in accounting. How’s everything go with things in your personal life? That kid of yours finally get out of his hitting slump in tee ball?!? Jeez, that stuff can be so FRUSTRATING! I totally get it. Anywho the reason why I’m emailing is because I need your W-2 form. We don’t currently have one on file because our bookkeeping changed over and the new system only honors those submitted after 2012 I think. So if you could send that over, that would be awesome.
Thanks again!
vs.
Hey Marge, when you get a chance could you send me an updated W-2? Sorry for the hassle, but our new system is requiring them. Hope all is well!
JT
Accounting
Most people don’t like reading emails, so why make them read extra? Get in, tell them what you need, add one polite turn of phrase if you want, and get out.
The end. Hopefully that made sense. I’ll be back with more of these whenever I feel like it.
America, I’ve heard you. You’re finding it hard to get roused for the big game this year, due to ever-escalating squeeze of commercialism, pointless two-week media suffocation, and generally villainous nature of both teams involved. For a good chunk of the country (i.e. those residing outside of Washington state and those tiny plots of land out east), it’s hard to be a fan these days. But fear not, my friends, for I have found some reasons to actually enjoy this year’s Super Bowl.
“But Sam,” you say, “how am I supposed to get behind either of these teams? The Patriots have been caught cheating more than once, have a pompous and unlikeable head coach, and have the most spoiled and entitled fan base in professional sports. And the Seahawks have Richard Sherman. I really just can’t root for either team this year.”
Putting aside the fact that you don’t have to root for a team to enjoy the game (though I do agree it helps), allow me to briefly address these concerns.
– The Patriots cheated with the ball thing.
Yeah, probably, and the NFL is investigating. If and when they find evidence of wrongdoing, they’ll hand out appropriate punishment. Why can’t we just leave it at that? Do you still hold it against your older brother for shoplifting that pack of Bubble Tape 17 years ago? No. You forgive, accept that he paid his penalty (i.e. was forced to give the gum back and tearfully apologize to the store owner), and move on. Let’s let the NFL worry about retribution.
– The Patriots head coach is an arrogant dick and their fans are sort of obnoxious.
Guess what? This is true of all NFL teams! We’re just force fed the Patriots version because they win a lot and are on SportsCenter all the time. And every single fan base will annoy you if you get close enough to them. I live in Colorado, and Broncos fans annoy the hell out of me, but that’s only because they surround me and their team has given them something to be loud about. If you’re a fan of any team, you’re annoying too. I’m annoying. We all suck. It’s just how it works.
– Richard Sherman.
Sherman has become persona non grata among most NFL fans since his weird tirade after last year’s NFC Championship. He comes off as brash, mean, and exceedingly cocky. He also has a degree from Stanford and is a highly intelligent dude, especially by NFL player standards. Sherman plays the villain role, intentionally, because it’s good for him and good for the game. I’ll explain more below.
Even IF you can’t stand either of the Super Bowl participants, I give you the following reasons to be optimistic about the game:
Finally, the top seeds from each conference meet in the big showdown. It feels like this never happens, so as fans, shouldn’t we applaud that we actually get to see the best two teams square off? Wasn’t that what we were always bitching about with the BCS?
*Nerd voice* Well, who knows if it’s actually the best two teams…
This time, we know! It’s football at its highest level, at its highest level.
If you don’t know what this is, I’m not going to explain it to you, because I’m so sick of it I find it hard to even think about. It’s been beaten to death from both sides, from those who think Bill Belichick needs to be executed or something, to the others who just keep blindly using the term “haters” in some attempt to mask wrongdoing. The silver lining here is it seems everyone else is getting sick of it, too. The rhetoric is dying, and we’re getting ready to move on.
The worst part about this scandal was always the idiots whose idea of comedy was to make jokes any time someone mentioned “balls.” Yes, morons, “balls” is a slang term for “testicles.” I’ll work on booking you a Comedy Central special. These people, I’m afraid, have not yet seen the diminishing return of their “jokes,” and thus I’ve been forced to ban them from the Lodge and cut them out of my life. I suggest you do the same.
People, have we already forgotten the important lessons taught to us by Vince McMahon and the WWF? (*gets news the wresting conglomerate was forced to change its name due to a legal dispute with the World Wildlife Found over a decade ago*) As I said, the important lessons learned from the WWE? The truth is, we need villians. We need someone to hate in sports, so we know which teams/people to root against. Having no one to hate is no better than having no one to love; both put us in bland, emotionless states that defeat the purpose of sport.
Richard Sherman knows this, and thus has strategically positioned himself to be hated by us. It makes the league more interesting, and it makes him more important. It doesn’t really mean he’s a bad guy, it just means he’s more savvy than the average player. It’s like Kid Rock positioning himself as an ignorant redneck in order to make millions. What? I’m not helping my argument with the Kid Rock comparison? Hmm. Fair enough.
The point is: let us celebrate hate. Let us celebrate feeling! Luckily, we have a few possible targets in this one. Aside from the aforementioned Dick Sherman, there’s Belichick, Pete Carroll, Marshawn Lynch (the interview thing), Russell Wilson (squeaky clean, manufactured image), Doug Baldwin (delusion/inability to comprehend statistics), LeGarrette Blount (weed? I don’t know), Earl Thomas (went to Texas), Tom Brady (Uggs), the ball kid who deflated the footballs in a solitary/rogue act, whoever made up the story about the ball kid deflating the footballs in a solitary/rogue act, Josh McDaniels (stupid face), and Darrelle Revis (being good – people seem to hate that).
And that’s just naming a few off the top of my head. We do not have to worry about the hate machine running out of gas in this one. Speaking of gas…
The NFL’s resident teddy bear, Wilfork is impossible not to love. As a Patriots defensive tackle, he specializes in clogging lanes on Sundays, and clogging arteries on Saturdays (and every other day of the week probably). Vince is good fat. Need proof?
That is the work of a great American. And, as Friend of the Lodge Kate Kelley adroitly pointed out, big Vince’s dance looks eerily similar to this otter’s. This confirms my long held suspicion that Wilfork proudly carries the torch of the Otter Life. Go ahead and root for the big fella on Sunday. I will be.
I’m from Minnesota. What can I say?
Duh. How did you even forget this? A good chunk of the Super Bowl goodness has nothing to do with the game. Let’s be honest, you’ve been trying to be healthy all January. You’ve consciously redirected your life after that health abomination that lasted most of December. You’ve occasionally made good food decisions, and even made it to the gym a few times. On February 1st, dig into some chips, dip, red meat, and a couple of brewskis. You’ve earned it.
For Christmas, my parents gave me a book called Get Wise: Make Great Decisions Every Day, which was written by the pastor of their church, Bob Merritt. I would have considered this gift a backhanded attempt at intervention, but they also gave the book to their other sons, who all have wives/fiancees, retirement savings accounts, and generally more put-together lives than me. So I don’t think there was an underlying hint.
ANYWAY, I’ve been reading the thing and it’s good. As the title suggests, it’s basically an exercise in understanding that the things you consistently do determine who you are, and the value of seeking wisdom over other things. I’m getting a lot from it.
But then, once in a while, as often happens with these things, I come across something that makes me go something like:
“What? Is he serious? Who is this guy? What’s today’s date?”
Basically, I disagree. Disagreeing is one of my most prominent personality traits, so I suppose that isn’t a surprise, but disagreeing with a man of the cloth, who wrote the book your parents gave to you for Christmas in an act of good faith and definitely not a subtle hint at fixing your life priorities…well, disagreeing with that guy feels kinda weird. Am I allowed to do that? Does this make me an asshole?
I came across one such passage:
…Don’t waste your life. Get going. Get on the education path, work path, skill development path, healthy relationships path, and volunteer and internship path. Get off the aimless bar-hopping, hooking up, and waiting-for-your-real-life-to-start path…
Both my kids were working by age twelve gaining skills, making contacts, dealing with people, and getting a leg up on every kid who sat at home playing video games and drinking smoothies. At age twenty-six, my daughter, Meg, had her master’s degree in child psychology, a job in the public schools, and a marriage to a med student. At age twenty-five, my son, Dave, had his law degree, a law firm job in Minneapolis, and a marriage to a twenty-four-year-old engineer. All four went to college, played sports, worked as many jobs as they could, volunteered, got internships, and stayed sexually pure and spiritually grounded during their teens and twenties. Now they’re set up to build a great life in their thirties, forties, and beyond.
I disagree. Vehemently. Not with all of it, but most of it.
I’ve tried to build the Otter Lodge on one main principal; that it’s good for you to try different things, experiment, and generally wander a little bit, while at the same time leading a responsible life and pursuing what you want. Maybe you don’t know what you want in life, in which case the wandering part becomes even more important. You have to find out what you like – and what you don’t – before you decide what you want.
The problem I have with the highlighted passage is it places all the emphasis on achievement – early achievement, to be specific – and disregards the value of other life experiences, those that may not put a degree on the wall or create financial security, but that enrich the person and grow the spirit.
I understand what Merritt is saying; stop aimlessly drifting through the best years of your life and go do something. Get your shit together. Contribute things to the world. All that’s endorsed and encouraged here at the Lodge. But the way he goes about it, in a braggadocious “look how great my kids are” manner, is not only off-putting, it just…sounds terrible. I read the paragraph and think, “okay, what now?” That’s great your wonder-kids have their lives and careers all sewed up by their mid-twenties, but what are they going to do for the next sixty years? Are they going to travel, live different places, meet new people, make mistakes, try different life paths, and experience the gifts of a vast world? Maybe, but I doubt it. More likely, they’re going to work – a lot – for the rest of their adult lives, pop out more kids, and take them to JC Penney to get their pictures taken in front of that blue-gray backdrop. They’ll wear sweaters and bring casseroles to family functions, and stand around and talk about how great life is because they’ve achieved the things that count for success within a community confined by a narrow and limited worldview.
Maybe. I could be wrong. I probably am. But when I read that paragraph, that’s what I see.
My advice (and this is my blog so I’m going to give it to you whether you want it or not and that’s final)? Take a chance. Make mistakes. Explore. Learn – about yourself and the world around you. Be careful of ideas like staying “grounded” – these ideas are grown from good intentions, but can easily turn stifling. Why stay spiritually grounded? Why not fly amongst many spiritual thoughts and ideas, learn new ways of thinking, and gain the understanding necessary to find your truth? Don’t try heroin or anything, but have a beer once in a while.
A quest for perfection can only end in disappointment. That’s a fact. So fail. Fuck up. Date the wrong person. Take the wrong job. Accept it as part of life, learn from it, and do better the next time. You have your whole life to get it right. But some of the most important lessons are learned when you get it wrong.
He said Jesus walked on the water
And I know that it’s true
But sometimes I think that preacher man
Would like to do a little walkin’ too
– Charles Daniels (American Philosopher)
Yesterday I came across a blog post from an online acquaintance – let’s say friend of a friend of a friend – that amounted to a collection of thoughts on life. Usually I’d read a few and move along to more samoyed pics, but this one was so good it made me stop and read the whole list, twice. It’s written by author James Rozoff and contains some great, concise little nuggets, like:
Such is the world we live in that calling someone an animal is an insult, while calling them a machine is a compliment.
No society has ever been destroyed by giving too much to its poor.
What kind of world are we living in that a corporation is given the rights of a person but not an unborn child?
We have to believe in free will, we have no other choice.
Whoever dies with the most toys, dies a child.
Take a break from the videos That Will Restore Your Faith In Humanity and check out the full post here. It’s worth a few minutes.
There’s a sunrise and sunset every day. You can choose to be there for it.
– Cheryl Strayed, Wild
Happy New Year, from the Otter Lodge.
(Pic: Westmister, CO)
As 2014 draws to a close, it’s time to unveil the Otter Lodge Year in Review. We’ll hand out some awards for completely unrelated things, criteria for which are biased and subjective. In other words, how we usually do things. In no particular order:
Brian Gaar (@BrianGaar)
Don’t know much about this guy, other than he’s a comedian from Austin, TX. And his tweets are hilarious. He consistently makes me laugh; probably the most efficient tweeter I follow, i.e. best Quality Tweet Ratio (QTR). Anywho, here are some gems:
Relationships are mostly you apologizing for saying something hilarious
— Brian Gaar (@briangaar) November 14, 2012
If two people are arguing and one person says, “You know what…” that argument is about to get awesome. — Brian Gaar (@briangaar) June 25, 2011
The best thing about trying to name a baby is realizing how many people you hate
— Brian Gaar (@briangaar) June 5, 2014
If a bear attacks you, play dead. Ok good, you’re about to feel like this forever
— Brian Gaar (@briangaar) June 14, 2013
I’d be the kind of scientist who put on shades every time I discovered something
— Brian Gaar (@briangaar) December 20, 2014
(I realize these are aren’t from 2014. Who cares?)
Sturgill Simpson
Introduced to me by citizen of the Lodge (in good standing) James Hardman, this is the first country artist I’ve actively listened to in a long time (read: ever). Sturgill is the bomb. Wholly authentic and lacking the cheese of most major country artists of today, I recommend him to you. Here’s something to get you started:
True Detective
I suppose it’s true I don’t watch THAT many TV shows, but I do watch a lot of the “OMG you have to watch all 4 seasons of this immediately!” shows – Breaking Bad, Homeland, House of Cards, et al. And True Detective was, far and away, my favorite of the bunch. Masterfully written, impeccably acted, dark, brooding, and suspenseful all at once, AND it played a central role in The Year of McConaughey, which should not go overlooked. So many high points – the end of Episode 3, the 6-minute tracking shot in Episode 4 – make it one of the best TV series I’ve seen, ever.
And it of course got snubbed for all the major Emmys, which went to Breaking Bad for the 17th year in a row. I mean, Breaking Bad was a great show, but did they really need the victory lap? Weren’t their trophy cases already overflowing? WHEN IS ENOUGH ENOUGH? This is why I don’t watch award shows. Well, this and like a hundred other reasons. ANYWAY, True Detective, hell yes.
For the 6th consecutive year, the award goes to, “what is the deal with those bathtubs in Cialis commercials?”
In each television advert for the popular boner pill, a graying yet still remarkably attractive couple somehow end up in dual, side-by-side, old-style bathtubs, looking out over a divide, ocean, or other panoramic view of sorts. Many questions are posed by these scenes, and few are answered. How did the tubs end up there? Was there a transportation service? Is the scene we’re seeing pre or post coitus? Are they planning on…just, climbing into one of the tubs to do the deed? Won’t the water go cold in a hurry? What’s the plan for getting the tubs off the beach/grand canyon?
Barack Obama (D-IL)
Folks, this one was a shoo-in. Sure, he’s been the only president in the last year, but he was also the best. Give credit where credit’s due.
Ok. Seriously. I’m 28 years old, and for the first time this year it dawned on me that no matter who is in the White House, half the people will spend a good chunk of their free time trying to prove that he (or she!) sucks. Perhaps I’m naive for not realizing this earlier. Anyway, here’s the point: stop being dicks. Barry Obama is a good dude, and though you may not have voted for him (I didn’t either), things are pretty good right now. Stop pretending they aren’t just to validate your previously held bias. If you are someone who actively bashes the president – any president – in order to set the stage for “your party” next time around, and you also call yourself a “patriot,” I implore you to look up the definition of the word.
I’m a white noise guy. Gotta have it when sleeping. At home, I turn the fan on at night, no matter what the season, to get that soothing hum.
But what if I’m not at home? What if I’m at a hotel, or a friend’s house where all the fans are spoken for? In walks the “Rain, Rain” app. 25 different sounds to relax to, all totally free. It’s mostly different versions of gentle rain, but there are some sneaky winners like the crackling fire, as well. And you always have it with you, because – let’s be real – your phone will never leave your side.
Simple, beautiful, and free, “Rain, Rain” gets our endorsement as the Otter Lodge App of the Year.
Bob Ross
Like it would even be anyone else. I don’t care that he died in 1995; his legacy lives on, now and forever. Bob can teach us much about life, and is the preeminent authority on living the way of the otter. He’s the only choice for the inaugural Otter Lodge Man of the Year Award.
I’ll leave you with a clip of Bob dropping some wisdom, as he so often did. Merry Christmas and Happy New Year, and let’s get after it in 2015.
Everything the light touches is our kingdom. A king’s time as ruler rises and falls like the sun. One day, Simba, the sun will set on my time here, and will rise with you as the new king.
And this’ll all be mine?
Everything.
(Photo: Steamboat Springs/Rabbit Ears Pass. Quote: The Lion King.)