Neil Patrick Harris Shapes The Universe

I was in the same room as Barney Stinson on Sunday. I'll let you soak that in for a moment. I'm still trying to soak it in myself.

Okay, technically it wasn't Barney; it was Neil Patrick Harris, who plays Barney Stinson on How I Met Your Mother. But still, Neil Patrick Harris was not only in the same zip code as me, he was in the same building, as part of Comedy Sketchfest. He was interviewing Brian Henson, son of Jim Henson. That's right: my Sunday afternoon featured a mix of Muppets and How I Met Your Mother--even if Neil Patrick Harris wasn't suited up, unless jeans and a baggy shirt count.

Let me say it one more time. Neil Patrick Harris. This is one more reason why it is awesome to live in a big city. Nay, not just awesome. It is, dare I say it, legend--wait for it--ary.

The event was a conversation, Neil Patrick Harris asking Brian Henson about his life growing up with Jim Henson and the Muppets. At the end, there was a live puppet demonstration, involving Brian Henson's latest project, Stuffed And Unstrung, in which comedians on stage improvise scenes with puppets, but the puppeteers remain visible, part of the action. Henson demonstrated how one works with a puppet in front of a television camera, discussing the difficulties of having to view a monitor while working a puppet to ensure that you were turning it the right direction, among other potential hazards. As he brought puppets to life in front of a camera, a big screen to his left projected the puppet, and the juxtaposition was startling.

On the one hand, you saw the puppeteer manipulating a puppet on the stage. On the other, this screen showed the puppet as if you were looking through a window into a Sesame Street-like world where the puppet came to life.

It was a sensation as strange as seeing Neil Patrick Harris in person after years of watching him on TV. Ah, America, the land of the celebrity, where they seem to become larger than life, when in reality, on this day, he was a funny guy talking about puppets with another guy, and it just happened to be on a stage in front of a couple hundred spectators.

We could have waited in line to get autographs, but I didn't even consider it. I'm not sure why I didn't, other than that I'm not really an autograph sort of guy. What would an autograph even mean? That for one moment, I was a couple feet away from someone famous, and they wrote their name on a piece of paper? Not a lot of inherent value to that, although my friend Peter got the following brilliant autograph from David Sedaris in Missoula: "To Peter, with a $incere feeling. David Sedaris."

In any case, Where did this weird feeling come from, this disbelief, this surreal feeling of seeing Neil Patrick Harris in person? Do we live in such a mediated world that people on TV or other famous people feel heavier in our perception when we see them in real life? Do they alter the laws of gravity, or act like a black hole, pulling in all light and matter around them?

More importantly, does this count as a celebrity sighting, given that it was a performance and I paid money to see it? It wasn't as random as finding myself standing two feet away from Robin Williams at a Mexican masked wrestling performance.

In the final analysis, I say it counts enough as a celebrity sighting--nay, a celebrity encounter--to make me awesome by association.

The Poetry Bicycle

I used to write poetry in large quantities. Some I liked; a lot hurt my sensibilities, like falling headfirst off a bicycle into some gravel. For some reason, though, I've fallen out of the poetry habit in the pursuit of projects such as this blog and others that seem more 'marketable.' That hasn't exactly proven to be a gold mine, or even a pyrite mine.

I think that my nature is not necessarily geared to writing fiction or writing articles for magazines. I will continue to work on that, because those seem the best options for finding paying work I'd want to do with the pen, but it is time to get back up on the poetry bicycle, scraped knees and all.

See how rusty I am at poetry? That bicycle metaphor is awful.

So I have a new project: writing poems about San Francisco, and on a schedule. I'll write a draft on one day; on the next day, I'll do a rewrite of that draft and start another poem. That gives me a manageable goal with an easy subject matter for getting back in to the practice of writing poems.

I figure the more structure there is to my writing practice, the better.

What sort of writing structures do you writers out there use? What sort of routines do you enjoy?

The Road Just Traveled By

2011 is off to a great start. So far, I am undefeated on the following Wii games for the year: Just Dance 2, Jeopardy, and Wii Sports Bowling. So while I am riding high on a wave of accomplishments, let's see how I lived up to my last year's resolutions.

Last April, I wrote a list of belated resolutions for writing and travel goals and posted it as a blog in order to hold myself to their pursuit by making their existence public knowledge. Everyone was fascinated, of course, and their happiness increased immensely as a result. In the spirit of advancing my goals for myself, I'm not going to wait until April of this year to make new resolutions. Instead, it's time for a quick review of how I measured up, and then an updated list of what to pursue next. To keep it interesting, perhaps I'll add some thoughts as to the viability of resolutions for humanity, and what it means that we drive ourselves for self-improvement. Or perhaps not.

Here's the list, as written last year, with the results I know you've been eagerly anticipating.

1) WRITING

a) Within the next six months, I will take a class on technical writing or copy-editing.
i) In October, I did take a one day class through City College of San Francisco's Adult Education Program on an Introduction to Copy Editing/Proofreading. There were only two of us in the class, but it was a useful discussion with a professional free-lance editor about the business--apparently there is a network of copy-editors in the Bay Area with meetings and everything, although he didn't specify if there are also neat decoder rings or secret symbols.
ii) On a somewhat unrelated note, I took a five week class on an Introduction to Short Fiction, through the same program though City College. That leads us to:

b) I will write two short stories within the next two months.
i) Success! Mostly. I wrote a short piece of flash fiction for a magazine contest that promptly vanished into the ether of all such pieces. The second story I wrote wasn't within the two month time frame, and isn't not finished, but I did produce two drafts of a story in the Short Fiction class that I feel have a core of possibility to them and will continue to polish.

c) I will continue to maintain topic-focused blogs at least every other day.
i) I have not strictly adhered to this schedule, but then again, no one is paying me to do so, and I do feel like I have produced a decent amount of writing.

d) I will research careers in editing and publishing.
i) I've not really pursued this with much gusto. The class on copyediting/proofreading was interesting, but I wasn't seriously considering following up on it at the time. I signed up for the class because the class sounded intriguing and I like working with words. However, now that questions of marriage and buying homes and other such big thoughts are taking on a more tangible character, I'm feeling more driven to look into this. I've found a website that seems to allow you to apply for free-lance writing work, which could be good side work and an introduction to that world.

My new writing goals are to write a two short stories and/or three poems a month, and to actually submit them.


2) TRAVEL

a) I will set up a separate savings account for travel, into which I will put 1/2 of all my deposits to savings accounts.
i) Done. This was perhaps too easy a step to really be considered a completed resolution. But then again, I hadn't done it before I wrote it down as a goal.

b) I will travel to Mexico this year.
i) This didn't happen last year. But I have bought tickets for the first week of March, so that's a good sign. I'll be going out in a lagoon, in a small boat, with the chance to see whales. That plan speaks for itself, I think.

c) I will travel to Toronto this year.
i) Done! My new passport was put to use, and other than Toronto's decision to shut down a major expressway out of the city on the very weekend we were traveling there, it was a lovely trip.

d) I will travel to New York City in the next three years.
e) I will go back to Europe in the next five years.
i) These last two are still long-term goals, yet to be planned, so I will not comment on them here. I simply include them again so I don't forget about them. That would be embarrassing.

All in all, I'm pleased with the results. I didn't get everything completed fully, but as everyone knows, anyone who fully lives up to every single aspect of their resolutions is just showing off.