What I have are strong feelings.  Strong feelings usually accompany big events or changes.  In the last 2 months, I’ve moved, I’ve found out my office is moving (not closer), I’ve spent more money on housing & repairs than ever before, and in general have thrown everything in life up in the air.  For funsies.

Oy.  It’s just been a long … year, I guess.  Lots of great things, but lots of big things.  Let’s be clear:  almost all of them are great, and even the ones that aren’t great aren’t that bad.  So I’m NOT complaining.  What I’m doing is processing all the horse shit feelings I’m having as we try & deal with all of it at once; it would be much easier to process if I had a meth habit, methinks.  Lemme get back to you on that.

What is really striking to me in everything that’s going on is how inefficient we FEEL, especially related to the move, even in spite of the sheer volume & crazy-short timelines we’ve been working on.  I think that feeling has to come from just bad expectations.  (Some of it, admittedly, is because a few things have not lived up to the most basic expectations we had – like lawyers breaking contract laws.)  Because we didn’t really know any better, we just sort of expected everything to be fine as we moved into a completely-rebuilt 1950s ranch home.  And we really didn’t prepare ourselves for being stressed out for doing the move in the middle of our busiest two months of 2012.  In September, we all went to Southern California for a working vacation.  Then I went to Chicago for work.  I came home on a Thursday & then we closed that Friday.  Then 2 weeks later in October we went to Ireland for a week with a 2.5 year old toddler.  And now we’ve been back for 10 days and feel like we’ve literally made zero progress since we moved.

It’s a completely irrational feeling, but that’s how we feel.  We have, in reality, put Kate into a great preschool, hung curtains, met neighbors, bought a rug, consulted landscaping, chimney & roof contractors to deal with water issues, unpacked 80% of the boxes, purchased a washer & dryer, and shopped for a shit-tonne of furniture.  (Our only real success on that front was a $75 queen box spring I bought from an Indian guy on craigslist, which was a great price considering it came with a free cumin smell & cricket jumper.)  That’s not a short list, nor is it an easy one.  But because we aren’t 100% settled, even feeling 99% effective feels completely unacceptable.

We suck at expectations, I think.

Anyway… this ended up being a bit of a therapy session for me.  Thanks for reading; may not have been the most interesting post ever, but it IS better than a meth habit.  If you’ve got any thoughts or consoling words, I’m all ears.  And penis.  I still have a penis.

Short answer:  really frikkin’ busy.  An excuse? Not a good one.  But I will say the one I have is probably the best of all possible excuses.  All of my creative energy has been going into entertaining the Nugget.  She’s such a little sponge; everything I throw out there she soaks right up, and then quickly gets bored & wants to go back to watching Cinderella or Lion King – which she can soak up repeatedly, apparently without EVER getting bored.  That fact comes with the implication that maybe I’m the one getting bored with my own Nugget-specific creations, or at least bored enough to not want to repeat the same material over & over… but then I remember that I’m not a DVD & it’s actually normal to want to keep things fresh.  So all my fresh stuff, which is in high demand by my highly loyal audience of one, is 1) skewed very young; B) performed live and not captured on video; and 4) usually accompanied by a slight poop odor (usually hers).

I’m also in the middle of consuming the “Song of Ice & Fire” series by George R.R. Martin.  If you’re not familiar, it’s currently a five tome series, of which I’m almost done with the third, with each tome weighing in around 850 hardback pages.  This is also the series that HBO has turned into “A Game Of Thrones”, an awesome new drama series titled after the first book in the series.  Political intrigue, war, dragons, sex, incest, dwarves, wolves, accents… this series really does have it all from a fantasy perspective, but I’m almost done with #3 and there really hasn’t been a whole bunch of wizardry or supernatural involved; shapeshifting, dragons born from rocks, yes – but Martin isn’t really elaborating on those as vignettes.  He spends more time describing each character’s garb than I’d like, and I also suck at visualizing gates & keeps & towers in castles, so he doesn’t rank in the top five of my sci-fi/fantasy authors list… but this is still a FANTASTIC series, and I spend whatever free time I have reading it.  I’ve been swimming through Lannisters & Starks’ family trees since Christmas, and probably won’t grab a towel until Cinco de Mayo when I climb out to swing drunkenly at a piñata, inevitably miss, and hit my own nuts.

All this is to say I’m sort of intentionally quiet with Shower Sandwich, which, when I return to MAKING things, will be my primary channel for distribution.  I’ve had a few strangers post a few comments, and plenty of folks watching, so I feel like it’s not a complete failure; hence I’m not discouraged, I’m just … distracted, as I mentioned above.  Also – thanks to all of you who’ve watched & given your honest feedback.  It’s a process, but the process doesn’t get me very far without the commentary.

Now… back to the nerdery.

That’s where you’ll find most of the stuff I’m up to these days.  Takes the steam out of my actual writing, honestly, so just head over there, at least for now.

That’s all.

It’s important.

Episodes 1-4 can be found here!

Any & all feedback is welcome, either here or in my YouTube channel.

Note: PodOmatic, while largely a very easy & great way to keep these things up here, only lets me embed player code that just takes you to the latest episode – so if I keep embedding it here, every embedded player will take you to the same episode. That’s less than ideal… so here’s the links to each one.

I’m officially over my “free” storage limit at podomatic, so if anyone has better ideas on where to post ~400MB video files for your enjoyment, I’m all ears. (Let me know if any of these episodes don’t work & I can save some space.)
Episode 3!
Episode 2!!
Episode 1!!!

With much ado, Episode Two.

1) I’m feeling ballsy today because work’s going well, and I made a tidy sum on my first ever “day trade” yesterday.  (No, I’m not a day-trader, I just decided to bet big & roll the dice yesterday, and they came up rosy.)

2) I’m back in therapy, and today’s session involved a minor break-through acknowledgement:  I’m angry about not being in control of my own sense of accomplishment.  i.e. I have almost zero ability to try something new on my own volition because I’m always afraid of failing & the punishment it can (and did) entail.

3) I’ve been podcasting with the Tech Support Guy Show for years, and a friend of mine, who consumes more than his fair share of podcasts, complimented my performances, and suggested that I use a podcast as a test platform for comedy since I fear taking the stage physically for a live audience.  (Fear is an understatement.  I shake like a wet cat in a beer cooler on rocky seas.)

When these three elements combined, they led me to finally say FUCK IT, and so today & I sat down and recorded 10 minutes of pure riffing.  And you know what?

IT DIDN’T TOTALLY SUCK.

I’d love your feedback, but DON’T put it in the comments, since I never seem to get them there.  EMAIL ME.  actor@brianmhansen.com

I’m using podOmatic to upload & host it for now, but 10 mins recorded on iMovie at 640×480 took up 25% of the free capacity they give me, so I may just start uploading it here.  So enjoy it one of two ways: here or below.

Seriously… follow me there & keep looking for it here, because it may not last long on podomatic; at this rate I can only get 4 episodes of 10mins a piece before I have to pay. (PRO service is 4 times bigger but costs $10/month… not sure if it’s worth it.  Even Tina Fey spent more than 40 mins being awesome before she got Awesome-Sauced by the media.

Job:  On the plus side, I’ve been doing it for 4 straight years (exaclty), so it’s much easier than it used to be, and I’m much more adroit at getting help when I need it.  On the down side, I still need a lot of help… mainly because we’ve got the work for 3 people and really only have me right now, and should really only have the work of 2.  (It’s the quantity driving the need for assistance, not the subject matter itself… I’m “approaching awesome” at what I do.)  We also have some of the world’s worst systems, and in case you were wondering, being on the other side of the country from them does NOT make them easier to deal with.  In related news, I’m starting to pick apart my day-t0-day & understand what parts of this I actually enjoy & which parts I want to avoid in the next role, whatever form that may take.  So far I’ve identified a minute part of what I do everyday as “Fun”, and the rest is all in the “Not Fun” supercategory.  *SURPRISE!*

Family:  Kate’s 15 months old now, and she’s awesome.  According to the world’s best Chinese pediatrician, she’s on track to be ~ 5’10″ tall, weigh 130lbs, and to have a head too big for any hat.  She’s literally off the head-size chart… which means she’ll either have a GIANT brain, be a REALLY awesome candidate for performing arts on stage or screen, or she’ll have trouble dragging her melon through the halls at school & will be mocked for blocking everyone else’s view of the chalkboard.  Speaking of chalk, put one in the W column for Renee; without her efforts over the last year, we wouldn’t be all the things we are: great parents, homeowners, landlords, composters, members of our community, good children, good siblings, and good friends.  (Okay, I think that means “put several” in the W column.)

Acting:  I’ve floated my headshot out to a few things, but the most promising comes up this weekend.  It’s a traveling Dinner Theater Troupe based in South Jersey, and it looks like they do mainly fun comedy stuff and/or mystery dinners at a number of different venues around NJ.  I’m anxious to find out more & see if they think I’m a good fit; stay tuned on that.  Mostly I’m just glad to be able to feel like I now have the time/energy to give to the performance side of life again.  It’ll be an even bigger challenge than it was in SF given we have Kate & a home & a rental property … in short we have even more commitments than we used to, and now I’m trying to layer on this acting thing as well… so you can imagine I’m bracing myself to be a completely exhausted dude if things pan out.  But it’s all been worth it up to this point, and I know the acting piece is a worthwhile venture when it goes well (which really comes down to the commitment of the people involved), so I’m actually looking forward to the exhaustion.  It’ll come with an equally large benefit of satisfaction and fulfillment.  Maybe then I’ll stop complaining about IT support & work problems that frankly just aren’t worth the hassle.  R would love that.

Friends:  One of the many excuses I lean on as to why I only blog once in a blue moon is that we’re a very busy family when it comes to the social calendar.  In the year we’ve been here we’ve spent probably 3/4 of our weekends hosting or being hosted by some of our best friends and/or family.  I get to see a lot of the folks that would be reading this anyway – and to make it worse, when I see them I don’t feel like I have much to talk about other than work & the fam – so the motivation to blog just hasn’t been there much.  But in the last few weeks I’ve been pinged by a number of friends I haven’t seen or talked to since we moved, so a) my apologies for the long-overdue “update” format of today’s post; and b) now that I’ve written it I realize I ALWAYS have stuff to talk about – but somehow it’s easier for me to write it than to think of it in the social setting & deliver a diatribe on the spot.  HOWEVER: if you count yourself among the number of friends I haven’t seen since last September, get in touch & let’s get something on the calendar to visit – wherever you are or wherever you’re coming from, there’s always some possible solution.  (A clear example that proves we’re BUSY people if not geographically distant people:  I haven’t seen Cermak since his son was born in January, and he lives less than 200 miles away – and we’ve done exactly 3 podcasts together since then… that’s right, we barely have time to do THAT any more.  Meanwhile I’ve been to SF 13 times since October.)

In short, there are tons of reasons why we HAVEN’T seen you, but very few reasons why we CAN’T see you soon.

KJ, Becca Rufer & Joan – miss you ladies.  Joan, have a great 40th birthday… I’m sure you will, considering I still can’t believe that’s a number associated with your indomitable enthusiasm, energy & optimism.  World’s Youngest 40-Year-Old.   To you & Becca:  I’m out there soon & will be in touch to try to make something happen.  KJ, you too… perhaps another lunch with the C-Monster?

Ahh… that felt good.  Was it good for you?

My rating: 3 of 5 stars

First, let me say I love all other books of Neal Stephenson’s that I’ve read. In most cases, they require a hefty investment (time, weight-the books are hefty, and spiritual collateral-you need to trust him), but the reward is more often than not HIGHLY worth it, and even when it’s not you still break even.

Now, to “Anathem”… The plot, in short, “Anathem” played to me like the work that might have inspired the screenplay of Armageddon, except they had to add Bruce Willis, remove all the references to geometry & logic, replace it with faux-geology, swirl in some sex jokes, and oh yeah why not have an Anthem by Aerosmith. Take the Michael Bay out of Armaggeddon, and you have some idea what Anathem is about. People stuck in remote places doing what the world has told them to do (or more appropriately what they can’t), and then some extraterrestrial threat presents itself & the people stuck in remote places become extremely important. Anathem = spaceship containing four races of interplanetary/interdimensional life forms; Armageddon = big rock.
None of this is to say that fans of Stephenson will be disappointed. Au contraire. Of all the books I’ve read of Neal’s, this one is the beefiest. Part of the premise is that you’re reading an account of the transpirations that happened on a different world/track and it had to be translated from Orth into your language. Yes, it includes a glossary & several clips from reference books; it even includes some geometrical puzzles & proofs. ANathem smacks you with this right up front, and it may take you a week to get through the first 100 pages.
If you get that far, you will be rewarded. Yes, the “action” is dry – there are zero vestiges of Michael Bay. The humor is also quite dry, but not surprisingly so. You’re encouraged to keep reading if you can get into some of the sharpest examinations of logic, dialogue, rhetoric, philosophy, geometry & nature you’re likely to find in a work of fiction. The voice you read learns much throughout the events that happen, and it speaks in a way that makes you think you’re finally about to learn something profound if you just keep going. Right up to the end I found myself getting little snippets of what Neal’s on about, of what his worldview really is or what I’m not considering about my own; these little nuggets were just big enough to keep me hitting the feed-bar.
Well, I kept going… and frankly, the “singularity” moment I was expecting never arrived for me. I’ll admit to not being able to follow the multitude of strings of social commentary Stephenson’s woven here; some of them are obvious & omnipresent, but I found myself repeatedly questioning whether or not there’s supposed to be some parallel meaning or secondary lesson I just didn’t quite see. In the end I decided there were probably more parallels than I could know (because Neal’s much better read & smarter than me), but of those I could perceive, I can say I’ve absorbed his POV. For other readers, this book may become a How-To or a DIY narrative. Still for others, Neal may have alienated them in the first 100 pages & never given them much of a reason to keep going, and their trust may not return.
In short, not my favorite Neal book. My fave is still Cryptonomicon. But I’m glad I read Anathem, if for no other reason than to be reminded what action movies would have been like without Ben Affleck.

View all my reviews