Sincerest Form of Flattery

Special thanks to Jess, who discovered the Instagram account of (Buffy, Angel, etc.) actor Tom Lenk.

With a lot of creativity, and apparently even more free time, he recreates celebrity / fashion shots with himself as the model, using random materials from around his house.

Consider Celine Dion’s 2017 Billboard Awards look, which he knocks off with some white pantyhose, Glad trash bags, a KONG dog toy, and a bunch of old McDonalds Happy Meal toys:

A post shared by Tom Lenk (@tommylenk) on

Or Lena Dunham’s Met Gala gown, which took a tablecloth, a pair of jazz pants, and a wig worn as a bun:

A post shared by Tom Lenk (@tommylenk) on

Check out his Instagram account for further truly genius shots.

June 8, 2017

Punchy

Yesterday afternoon, I was walking on 60th Street towards Columbus Circle, holding an umbrella in one hand, my phone in the other.

Halfway down the block, a black guy in his mid-20’s walking past me suddenly and unexpectedly elbowed me in the face.

Hard.

Hard enough that it bent my glasses, that I could feel the beginnings of a bruise under my right eye.

It took me a few moments to regain my bearings. Then I turned around and followed after him.

“Hey, buddy,” I said. “You just hit me in the face.”

“Yeah,” said the guy.

“Why the fuck did you do that?” I asked him.

“Because I felt like it.”

By that point, we were face to face.

“Now walk away,” he said.

I could feel my heart beating, adrenaline pumping through my system. But my mind was calm. Old sense-memory came back to me, from younger days when I competed in semi-pro MMA competitions, would get dragged into bar brawls alongside drunken friends upset because somebody was sitting on ‘their’ stool.

I found myself envisioning the choreography for what would happen next. My hands were already up near my face, palms open and forward – a well-practiced, nonthreatening street fight stance. His arms were by his sides, a stupid move. I imagined thrusting the fingers of my left hand into his eye, swinging a hard right elbow hook into the side of his face, grabbing the back of his head with both hands and driving it down into my right knee. Beneath us was smooth sidewalk, and I knew I could take it to the ground if I needed to, pull a double-leg takedown, get to a mount position, then punch him in the face again and again with his head pinned against the concrete.

For a moment, I almost snapped into it. The first rule of a street fight is to hit first, and hit hard. But with age and wisdom, I realized that because I could, I didn’t need to.

Go ahead, I thought, hands still in a nonchalant guard. Make my day. My lips curled into a smile. I slowed my breathing, stood my ground.

The second rule of a street fight is to never get into one with someone crazier than you. I think it was the smile that did it, a little too unexpectedly anticipatory. Seeming unsure, he took a step or two back, then turned and walked away.

I bent my glasses into shape, used the camera on my iPhone to examine the bruise forming below my right eye. I thought of Sun Tzu: “he will win who knows when to fight and when not to fight. The greatest victory is that which requires no battle.”

Productivity

Calmly mowing his lawn while a tornado spins in the background, this guy told an AP reporter he was “keeping an eye on it.”

As his wife explained, “he had it on the list to do the lawn.”

Captain Jack

Back when I was a kid, I was lucky enough to learn how to surf from Richard Schmidt, a legendary big-wave surfer, and one of the first two or three people to surf the infamous breaks at Mavericks.

We’d paddle out, ride waves until my lips turned blue in the freezing Santa Cruz water, then come back in to bullshit with the local surfers and rising pros who knew Richard. Often, there was a familiar-looking homeless guy there named Jack, a tremendously friendly guy with a scruffy beard, layered sweaters, and an eyepatch:

One day, as we headed back to Richard’s van, Jack walked along with us.

“It’s great seeing you as always,” said Jack, once we reached the van. And then he opened the door of a $200,000 1950’s Jaguar XK 140 parked next to the van, hopped in, and drove off.

It was then that I realized why Jack looked so familiar. I saw his face every time I put on my wetsuit:

Jack O’Neill, inventor of the wetsuit, passed away this Friday at the age of 94. He was a fixture of the Santa Cruz surf scene, a tremendously nice guy, and a brilliant businessman.

I wear O’Neill wetsuits to this day, and I silently give him thanks each time I’m out in the water, my lips still turning blue, but not nearly as quickly as they otherwise would.

RIP, Jack. You’ll be missed.

Single File

In Bird by Bird, Anne Lamott’s wonderful book on writing, she explains the title with a simple anecdote:

Thirty years ago my older brother, who was ten years old at the time, was trying to get a report on birds written that he’d had three months to write, which was due the next day. We were out at our family cabin in Bolinas, and he was at the kitchen table, close to tears, surrounded by binder paper and pencils and unopened books on birds, immobilized by the hugeness of the task ahead. Then my father sat down beside him, put his arm around my brother’s shoulder, and said, ‘Bird by bird, buddy. Just take it bird by bird.’

And, indeed, that works for nearly any kind of project. The whole might be overwhelming, but you can invariably break it down into a series of successive projects (and sub-projects and sub-sub-projects) each small enough that you can confidently take them on.

I’ve long taken that approach to goals, working backwards from five-year (or 25-year) endpoints, to one-year, one-quarter, and one-month waypoints. With that groundwork, I can then focus on just what’s in front of me today, yet know I’m still making progress on the big picture.

Yet I’ve also learned that there’s such a thing as too much sub-division.

Previously, I’d continued all the way back to one-week and one-day breakdowns, starting each day with a list of small tasks across a number of different projects. But because I’d chopped those tasks so fine, I ended up spending my day essentially serially multi-tasking. I never got to spend long Deep Work / Maker Time blocks on a single project.

Now, I stop my breakdown at the month level, then sort the resultant project list by urgency / importance. And each day, I focus only on one single project, the one at the top of the list, for at least the first few hours of the day, before dealing with daily habits (like blogging and emptying my inbox) or small one-off tasks.

Sometimes, it will be the same project for days on end. And though I initially had some anxiety about that – felt like I was leaving the rest of my projects unduly on the back burner – I can now empirically say, having just analyzed a year’s worth of my completion rates with both approaches, that I get waaaaaaaay more done when I take this single-file approach.

In other words, take it bird by bird. But take it by the whole bird, not by the beak and leg.

June 1, 2017