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Boredwalk Community: I'm Looking at You, Amelia Earhart
1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
Actual day job: HR wizard who occasionally dabbles in graphic design and event planning. Although if I had more business savvy and access to worldwide vaccination for everyone, I'd open up an indie bookstore to showcase up-and-coming talent.
2. What's your biggest pet peeve?
People whose only language is English and yet continuously misuse your/you're or their/they're/there. It's actually because of this pet peeve that my friend got me this shirt for Christmas and introduced me to the Boredwalk community! (Ed. note: you are preaching to the choir, Zachary!)
3. What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?
Just one? Man. It's hard to pick. Ideally I'd like to say "read any book where you see yourself and your upbringing represented," but to keep with the theme of my shirt, I'm gonna say Because Internet: Understanding the New Rules of Language. The irony of this recommendation is not lost on me. Trust.
4. If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
My answer to this at one point was just "Danny Phantom" since he can phase, go invisible, and fly, but if that's triple dipping, I'll settle for retrocognition. I could see what anyone was doing at any point in the past, and I could use it to solve historical mysteries! Looking at you, Amelia Earhart. (I would have allowed your original answer, but thanks for clueing me in to retrocognition!)
5. You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
They would always experience *just* enough of a delay between people's mouths moving and hearing sound come out, like a poorly buffered video. Both online and in real life. (Yeah, that would drive me nuts after just a few minutes.)
6. What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
Setting foot on all six continents with habitable human history! And the Studio Ghibli theme park when that opens in a couple years or so — I just wanna live my best Spirited Away fantasy.
8. If you drink: what's your go-to drink? If you don't drink: what's your go-to dessert or snack?
Tinto de verano! It's a wine cocktail they serve a lot in Spain — one part red wine, one part lemon seltzer/soda. During this holiday season, however, I discovered the magic that is hot chocolate with Trader Joe's gingerbread liqueur. I'm never looking back.
9. Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?
Deactivated most of my social media and made a New Year's resolution to visit 52 different parks (be they city, state, national, or theme) in Southern California this year. When I'm not working, there's a good chance that you'll spot me at one on the weekends!
THE STREET? SESAME. THE DAY? RUBBER DUCKY!
Happy National Rubber Ducky Day! If you — like me — are of a certain vintage, there are two things everybody knows: Rubber Ducky is THE ONE, and Rubber Ducky makes bath time fun!
Ernie knows that cleanliness is meaningless in the absence of a fun bathing experience.
Today is also National Gluten-Free Day, which is a culinary travesty, but I also don't want to minimize the plight of folks cursed with Celiac disease. The upside is that means there is more gluten for me!
The good news is that today is also National Korean American Day, in honor of January 13th being the day in 1903 when the first wave of Korean immigrants landed in Hawaii and settled there on a permanent basis. While Korean cuisine does include some gluten-y ingredients at times, most rice varieties are gluten-free. So break out the kimchi and gochujang and settle in for some bibimbap in celebration! Save some room for a nectarine, though — those were popularized in the US by Los Angeles-based Korean American fruit seller Leo C. Song in the 1930s!
Last, but not least, today is also National Sticker Day! Fun fact: every Boredwalk order ships out of our office with a free limited edition vinyl sticker featuring one of our designs!
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On the birthday front we have three that really stand out:
• First up, happy birthday to legendary jazz guitarist and composer Joe Pass, born this day in 1929! Despite a fairly crippling heroin addiction interrupting his career in the 1950s, he went on to work with greats Oscar Peterson and Ella Fitzgerald in the 1960s and 1970s and continued performing until shortly before his death from liver cancer in 1994.
• Next, a very playful (but surprisingly hard) birthday shove to the very funny Julia Scarlett E. Louis-Dreyfus Hall, born this day in 1961! While she is most well-known for her portrayal of the character Elaine Benes on world-conquering 1990s sitcom Seinfeld, it's important to remember her time as an SNL cast member, her bizarre appearance opposite IRL husband Brad Hall in 1986's horror-fantasy Troll, and her starring roles in more recent shows The New Adventures of Old Christine and Veep.
• Moving along, happy birthday to television screenwriter, producer, showrunner, and author Shonda Rhimes, born this day in 1970! Ms. Rhimes is most well-known as the creator, head writer, and producer of the popular Grey's Anatomy and its spin-off Private Practice, but she also brought us the political thriller Scandal and crime drama How To Get Away With Murder. What a dynamo! But let's not forget that she also wrote Britney Spears' critically-panned 2001 vehicle Crossroads...
A bunch of war stuff happened on this day across history, but the thing that really jumped out at me about today is that it was on this day in 1919 that California voted to ratify the constitutional amendment prohibiting the sale of alcohol. Boo!
OK, OK...you've waited long enough. It's link time!
1. This dude in China trained his pet goldfish to play soccer.
On the one hand, this is very impressive. On the other, they're never going to win a World Cup unless they work on their defense, too.
2. Man decides to build home gym, invites his dogs to become inaugural members.
That's a pretty sweet-looking spa and smoothie bar!
3. Want to watch praying mantises watch TV?
Of course you do! I'm conflicted about this, though — I don't know if this constitutes "enrichment" so much as "cruel torture." I'd be a pretty unhappy mantis if you kept showing me foods I could never actually eat.
4. Let's all ooh and aah at the finalists for the "Best Optical Illusion of 2020" contest!
...even if the true winner was "the belief that 2021 would be remotely better than 2020."
As a fan of both Rube Goldberg machines and the game Mouse Trap, I love this! That said, the two most unrealistic elements of this video are that 1.) someone found a functional purpose for a fidget spinner, and 2.) this little critter didn't leave a SINGLE PELLET OF POOP in its wake over the course of these five minutes. I know from experience: hamsters are sh!t machines.
Boredwalk Community: Rock N' Roll Puppeteering
1. What's your actual day job and what's your dream day job?
I help write public health safety standards. It sounds utterly boring, but I help make sure that the water you drink isn't poisonous and the products you use don't kill you. So it's really rewarding and kind of a big deal. (Ed. note: the most important jobs tend to be the most thankless. So thank you!)
2. What's your biggest pet peeve?
People who chew with their mouths open, people who ask me if I'm okay when I say "ow," people who call the cops on other people when they should be minding their own damn business, people who... I guess just anything people do annoys me. (Same!)
3. What's a book you think the Boredwalk community should read?
Untamed by Glennon Doyle
4. What's the most useful piece of advice you've ever received?
One time in therapy, while blaming myself for the problems of those I love, my therapist told me that I'm "not as important in other people's lives" as I think I am. I was offended at first, but then I realized she was right. I'm not the cause of other people's problems and it's not my job to help solve them. (*Nods*)
5. If you could have any super power what would it be and why?
To help people that disagree with me to see that I am, in fact, correct. (Which in theory would obviate the need for any other super power. Clever!)
6. You can curse your nemesis with a minor annoyance for eternity; what do you choose?
Hiccups.
7. What experience do you most want to cross off your bucket list?
I'd love to visit Japan; I've been learning Japanese since the pandemic started, and I'd love to go and completely confuse people with my loose grasp on their language.
8. What is a surprising fact about you?
I used to be a puppeteer in a rock n' roll puppet show. We had a skit about Jeffrey Dahmer. It was awesome.
9. Where can the rest of the Boredwalk community find you?
A long, long time ago, I was cool and I used to shoot photos of bands and burlesque performers. You can see photos on my Flickr.