Jeff Likes to Tell Stories

Welcome to my blog. I haven’t kept up with it in a while. But I hope to get back to writing the types of stories you’ll find here. If my life was a sitcom, these might be considered scripts for the show. I write about my life, my interactions with my family and those strangers I encounter on a daily basis. My more serious writing can be found in various places. But I often post them on Medium.

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 17.07.2011

Two new posters from the Chamomile Tea Party. Click on each of them for a close-up view. It's been pretty steamy here in Washington. But I'm not talking about the weather. Here in DC, we seem to live and breathe politics. It's not always our choice. Sometimes our jobs literally depend on what's going on on Capitol Hill. And, the rancor you might pick up out there is magnified over here. Political wrangling and rhetoric is pretty high right now as the Republicans and Democrats are jockeying for position. But it seems like they're jockeying more for the 2012 election than...

News Outta My Control, Professional Auteurism / 09.07.2011

Wally Shawn photographed for Time magazine. This has got to be the worst photograph of Wallace Shawn I have ever seen. What were the editors of Time magazine thinking when they decided to use Peter Hapak's image for their summer reading feature in last week's edition? What? You don't know who Wally Shawn is? I know Wally and this is NOT him. Well, I actually don't know Wally personally, but I once saw him at a phone booth on the street next to the Whitney Museum, which is the same thing. You do remember The Princess Bride, don't you (he played...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 02.07.2011

Today marks the first anniversary of an idea. One year ago today, as I was walking home from work, my brain gave birth to the Chamomile Tea Party. More specifically, I decided to take World War II-era propaganda posters and remix their words with commentary about the caustic state of contemporary American discourse. I remember exactly how it happened and exactly where I was when the idea hit me. I was let out of work early for the July 4th weekend. I took the Metro home and was walking the last mile to my house. Listening to NPR's All...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 30.05.2011

[raw] My reservations for the moon were set and this card proved it. Click image for larger view. [/raw] For all the dystopian commentary on mankind's distant future the 1968 film 2001 projected, it also allowed us to place ourselves in an optimistic and limitless near future as we neared the apex of America's space program: the moon landing. This was one of the first films to feature low key product placement like the American Express credit card and the iconic scenes of Pan Am's Space Clipper ferrying people to the a near orbit docking station on their way to the moon....

Barely Socially Acceptable, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 15.05.2011

No Smoking

I thought the facts made me right. Image by spelio

As I stood in a long line at the ATM outside my bank I smelled smoke. It came and went and, after a while I started to look around for the smoker. At first, I couldn't spot him but finally noticed the man right in front of me was holding a cigarette behind his back as he conversed with the woman in front of him. When I was young I had a severe form of asthma with no help, I'm sure, from my parents' 1950s smoking habits. Luckily, I grew out of the disease. But to this day, I relive those years whenever as much as a simple chest cold impedes my breathing. So you can see why I don't like inhaling secondhand smoke. Rather than passively accepting my fate, I've started to be a little more proactive when it comes to this part of my health. I watched him for a while, assessing his approachability, but decided not to pursue it.

Yet, I really didn't want that smoke wafting in my face. I felt I was being held hostage in line. The next nearest bank branch was a few miles away and my lunchtime was almost up. And, yes, he was shorter than me and dressed in a business suit with no visible tattoos but you never know with smokers (okay, to be fair, you never know with anybody). I took a few steps back to catch my breath and consider my options. "Please don't say anything," I told myself. "Remember when you nicely asked a woman smoking just inches from a restaurant door to please move away? Don't do it." Suddenly I heard myself saying, "Excuse me, would you mind not smoking in line?" And with that I stepped over to the other side.

Child's Play, Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 21.02.2011

Jim Anderson surrounded by his adoring family. Umm, not quite me. I walked down the hall as I'd done thousands of times before. As always I'm on a mission. Most of them are trivial: take the trash to the kitchen, transpose a novel from my backpack to my nightstand, or talk to my wife about something or other. This time as I walked out our bedroom door I turned my head, just for a second, to glance at my older daughter's bedroom. And in that moment I felt the culmination of my life to that point. These fleeting events can never...

Fairly Odd Parents-Present / 29.12.2010

As we get ready to ring in the new year, I'm reminded that I'm not getting any younger. And, I'm quite comfortable with that. Late night New Year's Eve parties have given way to quiet evenings at home with my family and friends. A little Thai, and while the kids play in their bedrooms with friends, we're nicely ensconced in front of our fireplace, a good old vine Zin in hand. Times Square isn't even on our radar. But being comfortable isn't my only goal come January. Oh, sometimes I aspire to be a Father Knows Best sort of dad,...

News Outta My Control / 08.11.2010

John Boehner on the cover of Time. Click image for detail. When the mailman handed me this week's Time magazine I was immediately drawn to the cover photograph of John Boehner, the presumptive Speaker of the House. But I couldn't figure out why. There is something very odd about it (see detail). It's not an attractive portrait. The shallow depth-of-field forces us to confront his face. His eyes are bloodshot and his expression is inscrutable, like Da Vinci's portrait of Mona Lisa. Boehner looks a little goofy. Is his grin comical, magnified by the soft shadow of his Perot moustache-shaped philtrum?...

Artistic Tendencies, Fairly Odd Parents-Present, Idiosyncratic Celebrations, News Outta My Control / 31.10.2010

I positioned us at the Rally for a good photo op of the Capitol. At the last minute I decided to bring one of my Chamomile Tea Party posters to the Rally for Sanity here on the National Mall yesterday. So Friday afternoon I got it printed BIG. You might wonder why this wasn't on my radar weeks ago. After all, procrastination is not my usual style. Let's see, there's work, soccer games, work, grocery shopping, exhaustion, and work --well, you get the picture. The Chamomile Tea Party is my "side" biz. Promotion is key to any success but my methodology...

Artistic Tendencies, News Outta My Control / 26.09.2010

The latest poster by the Chamomile Tea Party (click image for larger view). Posters distill the essence of ideas or messages to their most economical form. You glance at a poster as you walk by the wood barricades of a construction site or, these days, as you peruse the walls of the Internet. When remixing someone else's poster as I've been doing with World War II-era propaganda posters for the Chamomile Tea Party, I'm initially attracted to the design and then to its message. Simple and direct is best. Then the real thinking begins. What do I want to say? What's my...