Hey Joe

Feedback on feedback

I've received a few emails in response to my last post, well my second to last post. While I'm sure the masses enjoyed Jabberjaw, most apparently have not felt moved enough to write me about it. 

No, I'm referring to the column about my neighbor's recent suicide, which ran in our local paper last week.

A few of the comments I received:

"I just wanted you to know that I appreciate your thoughts, and I plan to pick up the phone and make dinner plans with a couple friends."

"You did a really good job Joe.  It was a moving article.  Keep up the good work."

"This e-mail is just to thank you for writing what must have been a very difficult column...Thank you for being brave enough to write that.  Much good will come from it, you can be sure. Myself, I did make a couple of calls and also sent a few cards."

So, that's nice. I always appreciate it when people take the time to not only let me know they've read my stuff, but that they actually enjoyed it. If something I've written is able to do a bit of good out there, so much the better.

So to those who have written, or stopped me in Safeway to tell me that you liked the article, I thank you and I appreciate it.

Everyone is jabbering about Theme Song Thursday

 

"OK, we need to come up with a way to capitalize on the whole "JAWS" juggernaut. Any suggestions?"

"What if we made a cartoon about a Great White Shark that has adventures with a gang of teens?"

"You mean sort of like an underwater version of Scooby Doo? I like it, but sharks aren't very cuddly characters."

"Well, we could make the shark a cross between Scooby Doo and Curly from The Three Stooges."

"That's just insane enough to work. Run with it."

Make the call while you still can.

Last week, my neighbor took his own life. For the sake of privacy I won’t state his name. I was at the house with his father and the police shortly after they made the discovery.  I sat in their hallway rubbing my face with my hands trying to absorb what I was seeing, not believing it, yet unable to deny what my own eyes were witnessing. 

Understand that I hesitate to write about certain things. I worry about my reasons for writing, the fallout of my words, the possible reactions. Will my words anger someone, or worse, cause pain? But writing is what I've always tried to do. It's the only thing I've never totally lost interest in doing. It may be sporadic and with long sabbaticals, but I always come back to it, and when something happens I feel a need to write about it. Often I have no choice. I don't know what I hope to gain but something inside clicks on, and my mind begins mulling how I might write about it. When I realized I had a column due my topic was clear.

To read the rest of this article click HERE and scroll to page 8.

 

Theme Song Thursday dives deep

 

After last weeks visit to Obscurityburg, I thought we'd take the train a little further down the track, stopping today at Abstruse Junction. (Thank you Thesaurus.com)

I'd be surprised if many of you (is "three" many?) remember Marine Boy, which aired during the mid to late 1960's. I thought I remembered it fondly until watching this. Now it just looks boring. If every peril Marine Boy faced was dispacthed as easily as in the opening credits each episode would only be about four minutes long. Perhaps they were figuring on the low attention span of their audiance.

Obscurity is the Theme(song)Thursday

 

So does anybody remember Kimba? I used to watch this after school while eating pb&j sandwiches. If memory serves, which it seldom does, this was around 1971-72.

Oh, how I cry for my long-lost youth!! :(

 

Flashback Friday

Several years ago I realized that I was a complete loser with no friends. As such, I begat a quest to remedy that little personal failing by hunting down potential pals. Tony was the first, and last, of my conquests. 

Will Blog for Friends

 

The facts:

• I'm a loser with no friends
• I'm older than most of my co-workers
• They want nothing to do with me anyway because…well see #1
• I have a blog

Up until this point I've used the POWER of this blog for the good of mankind, but no more. Today I'm using it to begin the Be Joe's Friend campaign.

During this crusade, I will turn the POWER of my blog into my personal bully pulpit, and attempt to badger various people into becoming my friend.

Why the hell not, right?

• Who pays the $4.95 to Typepad every month? Me.
• Who spends inordinate amounts of time coming up with creative chunks of flotsam for your enjoyment? Me.
• Who cries himself to sleep at night at the prospect of eating lunch alone every day? How the f*ck should I know? Certainly not me. Shut up.
• Who can use as many damn font types and bullets in his posts as he wants? Me.

So who can use his blog for whatever twisted agenda he freakin' wants?

You're damn right.

My first new "friend" will be a fellow blogger and local boy by the name of Tony Hicks. I understand he also writes a column for some local rag, but as we typically either:

1. Leave the newspaper in the driveway for weeks on end
2. Use it to protect our kitchen table during "art projects"
3. Use it to clean up Sonny's barf

I'm really not familiar with his work.

Joe's new friend --->

 

However he is local and he's generous when buying drinks, so he meets a few of the important criteria on the "Criteria to be Joe's Friend" list. The fact that he's a writer will allow us to "talk shop," in between checking out the local babes and arm wrestling.

Tony – let me know when you're free and we'll hook up and swap stories. I don't have any, so be prepared to talk. And bring your wallet.

OK, who else wants to be Joe's friend? Speak up!

 

Originally published on April 22, 2008 in My Life

Here's a fact, it's time for Theme Song Thursday

 

This 80's juggernaut had it all; the snooty, rich girl, the fat, funny girl, the rebellious, tough girl and spunky black girl. Formulaic television at its finest; is it any wonder it was such a huge hit??

Gag.

If Hemingway were here he'd bitch slap these losers.

There's a funny bit in The Comedy Writer, by Peter Farrelly where he says:

"I normally didn't do writerly things in public, such as taking a pad and pen to a coffeehouse, and I always felt a little embarrassed for those who did. It seemed pretentious and calculated and Hemingwayish because, really, who the hell could do good work with twenty-five other pseudo-bohemians sitting around using words like 'masturbatory'and bourgeois?"

So anyway, I'm currently surrounded by a bunch of pseudo-bohemian computer-pecking hacks in a downtown Martinez Starbucks. I've finished my court duties and am getting ready to head home. I'm sort of in employment limbo at the moment. I'm in touch with my people at Kaiser about a couple of possible gigs. I've also applied for a couple of full-time things at The Gap that I'm still waiting to hear about. There was a possibility of more contract work at the Gap, but I have not heard anything and have not followed up. I was sort of feeling that I needed to focus more on the court work and am concerned about taking on more work at the moment. And speaking of more work I've been neglecting the blog posts for the green school because, well frankly I'm sick of it. It's been almost a year and I'm tired of hunting up interesting stories for my daily green piece.

I think part of it is the end-of-summer-blahs approaching. Lisa is teaching summer school so her summer is essentially over. The girl goes back to school on August 17th! What the hell ever happened summer lasting through Labor Day weekend? Nowadays we don't even get two full months of summer. School doesn't end until early June and it's back in session by August. That sucks ass. Anyway, our vacations are over. We're hoping to get back up to Tahoe one weekend this month or next, but for all intents and purposes we're done.

What this means is that now is the perfect time to land a full-time job. We'll all get back to the grind together and I'll have all year to build up some vacation time for next summer. All I need now is for someone to make the smartest decision of their career and hire me. Come on "future employer," don't blow it.