bookpimp reminded me i forgot to post the answer to monday's bonus riddle. apologies.

The riddle:
you go into the woods and get it
you sit down to search for it
and you bring it home with you because you can't find it?
what is it?

The answer:

for those who know of my practice of not reading news or websites, save a few friends, i have new evidence of how diligent i am to this practice—i just learned two weekends ago that james gandolfini died several months ago. an article i read mentioned his passing. i re-read the sentence three times wondering if there were two james gandolfinis or if i was mis-remembering the name of the recent sopranos star. even at that point i didn't look it up on-line but days later asked a teacher at the boys' school when it occurred to me in a semi-related conversation. after expressing some shock at my ignorance, the teacher confirmed the information. after learning of my news embargo, he offered to let me know if any more celebrities of merit died.

in thinking on that later, i have one friend who sends me funny news stories and another who sends me everything about circumcision. maybe i just need to find a few more genre specific folks to filter through the deluge of news and send me the items they know would be of interest to me. heck, i'd be willing to make an annual steak dinner for anyone who provided such a time-saving service.

i promised answers to the jokes posted last week. here they are:

ANTHONY
question: how do you tell if you have a dumb dog?
answer: he only chases parked cars
note: saying the word 'parked' proved quite effortful for anthony and caused a lot of people to scrunch their faces in thought while they ran through the options. it was neat seeing the moment they got it as their countenance relaxed going from strain to smile.

ALEX
question: what do you call an elephant in the arctic?
answer: lost
note: i continue to marvel how easily alex carries himself with strangers. in the early days he seemed to be a guy who would be forever fearful and intimdated by unknown folks, especially grown up ones, but recent years have exposed a quiet charisma in him that is so unassuming it for-sure sneaks up on most people.

BELLA
question: what do you ghouls and ghosts wear?
answer: boo-ties
note: while you might have expected more from bella, on this day, all her focus is given to better, faster coverage of the homes she hopes to hit. i need to tell her that some people reward smart jokes with extra candy.

BONUS:
while trying to find their jokes last week, here's a riddle the kids stumped me with.

you go into the woods and get it
you sit down to search for it
and you bring it home with you because you can't find it?
what is it?

i'll let that slide through your fingers for a bit before the reveal.

for those that might not know, st. louis has a tradition where the trick or treaters have to (are supposed to) have a joke to tell before getting candy. this ritual initially annoyed me but has grown on me over the years. here are the kids' jokes this year:

ANTHONY
how do you tell if you have a dumb dog?

ALEX
what do you call an elephant in the arctic?

BELLA
what do ghouls and ghosts wear?

i'll let you chew on those over the weekend. i'll post the answers next week.

marty has started telling bella (12) she is getting too old to trick or treat, news that proved reasonably devastating to both bella and i. for bella, more than the dressing up or the boons of the candy, she loves the challenge of hitting as many houses as possible in her allotted window. obviously she has gotten dramatically better each year, namely through good planning and strategy. the last two years she's graduated from the orange plastic pumpkin container to the pillow case to carry her candy, the inside sign of a real gamer. as for me, i'm one who believes, that like with many facets of life, one's entry into and out of halloween deals more with their personal love of the ritual than an actual age. so as long as one is willing to engage in the rules and requirements of the tradition, one is eligible to play. i feel i aged out of the dressing up thing at around seven but surely know several people, my age, that haven't lost their love of it yet. more on bella's status as a pillowcase carrying participant in years to come i'm sure.

something that has become my favorite part of halloween in our home is the post-trick-or-treating trading session that happens just inside the doorway. bella introduced this practice a few years back and early on it proved to be little more than her figuring out how she could get her favorite candy from her brothers' bags. in this routine, each kid dumps out their bucket and starts assessing the stock, pulling their favorites aside. this obviously leaves a less coveted circle of candy before them which they start offering for trade.

does anyone like almond joys? almond joys here.

yes. yes. i want them.

what do you got?

i got ... i got ... i got skittles.

ok. skittles for almond joys. here's three. you got three?

yes.

their hands exchange the goods quickly and begin the desperate search for the next trade. now that everyone is older, the bartering is much more even, heated and raucous. last night we had three extra kids over and the decibels hit new heights--although this happens with birthday party pinatas too and while there are more kids, there is less variety which makes things a bit more sedate. last night's trading was a furious affair given the ages of the kids and volumes of candy. the craziest bidding war happened when bella raised a mini pack of swedish fish over her head with both hands looking like she cradled a sacred chalice above her. she loudly called out "swedish fish! i've got one bag of swedish fish here!" this announcement silenced the room as everyone stopped and stared over bella's head. they then looked down and started calling out candy names. when someone said kit-kat bella lit up and said yes. when someone heard her response, they yelled "i'll give you two kit-kats". you know what happened next. the one bag of swedish fish ended up going for eleven kit-kats to alex. when bella stepped over the segregated ponds of candy to alex's spot, he counted out six kit-kat packs in her hand while she held the prized swedish fish in her other. when he stopped at six she looked at her hand.

whoa buddy. where's the rest?

what?

you bid eleven.

yeah.

there's only six here.

but there's two in each pack. that's twelve. so really, you're getting an extra one.

(after a pause) ok. since you're my brother, i'll let that slide. but next time, no funny math.

i felt bad for anthony as he had problems reading the candy names so just had to hold things over his head and in a tinny voice shout, "i have these. does anyone want some of these?". his small call couldn't compete with the din of the room so i'd see what he had and tell him the name so he could upgrade his marketing to, "i have a heath bar. does anyone want a heath bar?" which usually did better to get the attention of the frenetic, sugar-addled audience.

and this, this post-collection ritual, is mostly why i think bella should be allowed to continue trick-or-treating. what would ever happen to the candy trading-floor were she to be benched. she brings an attitude and fierceness to the affair i don't think will be easily replaced. and bella and i are not the only ones thinking on her potential forced retirement. while we were between houses with a lit porch light anthony told me that because this was bella's last year trick-or-treating they, the three kids, were going to create a 'candy bank' they each put candy into each year so that when mom said they were all too old to trick-or-treat anymore, they would still have some halloween candy. i wonder how a limited supply of stock would amp up the trading floor. i could see it getting physical right quick.

and speaking of cogent points made by my seven year old, while playing twenty questions with anthony's classmates at his room party earlier in the day, anthony raised his hand. when i called on him his question was mildly different than the others kids questions. one kid's first question to a new game was not 'is it an animal' or 'is it bigger than a breadbox', but "is it an ardvark?". when i said no it was not an ardvark, the next kid i called on asked, "is it blue?". when i said no it was not blue, the hands continued popping up. when i called on anthony, he asked, "what kind of matter is it?" all the adults all looked at each other and then to me for the answer. here i had the embarrasing task of having to say i wasn't sure aside from the fact that the thing i was thinking of did have matter. my first grader then assisted me by adding, "no dad. i mean is it solid, liquid, or gas?". now that i could answer but wished he said that in the first place so i didn't have to so publicly reveal to the room why i chose the liberal arts over the sciences. they say with modern studies there comes a point where parents will not be able to help their kids with their homework. i think that point has come at an embarrassingly early age for me.

if you prefer something with some meat on it: and for those who are more hankering for a chicken mcNugget:

if memory serves, aleo fell asleep before the twentieth house, not surprising given the interior of that costume had to be balmy 120 degrees. bella continued on, possibly hitting almost 100 homes (a modest number compared to her post-ten coverage) that night. and at each one she'd point down at the sidewalk to the stroller with two brown, furry feet protruding and ask, "can i have a piece of candy ...

at parent-teacher conferences, alex's teacher said that one concern he had about alex dealt with the slow pace in which he did his work. he went on to say that in most cases it doesn't matter but it will in testing and as he progresses in years and the work becomes more complex. in turn, i told the teacher that were we to record alex leaving our house under three different circumstances, once on a normal no-hurry outing, another before trick-or-treating, and a third when the house was on fire and lives were in jeopardy, that he the teacher, nor marty, nor i, based on alex's pace, gait or countenance would be able to discern the difference between the three scenarios. there's just no rushing the boy. but, if he, the teacher, were able to find a trick to put a little giddy-up in the boy's tempo, there was a shiny five dollar bill and loaf of homemade banana bread in it for him.

if you distract anthony from his work or play, he will, in a very exasperated manner, turn and say and yes, there are waving arms involved.

one of the hardest parts for the family regarding marty's return to work dealt mostly with the boys and their morning cuddles. for as long as they've existed, the first thing alex and anthony did upon waking every morning was seek out their mother, slip under the blankets next to her and wiggle in as close as possible. given the early hour marty rises and leaves for school, the boys are mostly lef ...

the story i'm after starts at the 28:10 mark (which the video should start at or close to).

i'm a recentish convert to flossing. since drinking the lemonade—not that i would ever admit to drinking such a sugar-rich beverage where my dentist could see—i've been a consistent four-five times a week flosser. then i read an article by dr. oz where he likened skipping flossing to only wearing deodorant under one armpit. this visual seems to have been the missing bit of tutelage necessary to upgrade me from a four-to-fiver to a six-to-sevener.

as for why i still sometimes only hit the mark six times a week, the nights i miss i'm surely sprawled across my bed in a parenting coma. in such moments, not flossing is the least of my problems as in the past i've crashed with the milk still on the counter, water running on the lawn, and once with our home's front door standing open, yes, like all night.

parenting coma's prove more severe than food or real comas, reason being, when you come out of a parenting coma in the morning, the kids are still there.

bella and cecelia were far from the youngest girls at this sara bareilles concert (back story) as it seemed like i saw some as young as eight in the room. this made it all the more scandalous when sara b dropped her first f-bomb after a song and then shared that not many people knew she swore like a trucker, something she and her ...

on a tuesday, bella approached me to ask if she and a friend could go to a concert. this would be bella's first concert. before i could speak she pleadingly added she and her friend loved this performer who was a really great girl and the concert was at a venue in our neighborhood so we could walk there meaning she could get home super-fast. the pitch went on a while. i asked the date of the show....

marty missed our last movie night. she doesn't like to do this but i sent her away. since returning to work marty's friend time went from semi-regular chats at parks and kids events to comments made in passing while porting the children to and fro. of course with her being marty, she pushed back from being sent away, saying, spending what little free time she has with her family is the right thing...

in partial regard to the book i posted about yesterday, i remember when my former boss and mentor turned fifty i asked her if there was a best part of hitting this lofty milestone. she had an answer ready and looked happy to share it. with more than a small hint of excitement in her voice she said it was the realization, finally, that everyone is not talking or thinking about you and that in the rare moments that they actually might be, knowing that it doesn't matter, that it doesn't matter one iota.

for her, this epiphany proved one of the most liberating and meaningful parcels of wisdom ever set before her. the fact that my boss and mentor was an african american, female executive in a wildly conservative banking environment should add some weight to this discovery. while not yet fully there, i can sense myself trending in this direction. i can also sense the saliva building around my mental jowls at the thought of biting into the philosophy whole.

a new TROYSCRIPT was posted today. player

i somehow forgot to mention one of my favorite everyman moments. in 2011 i was contacted by a company looking to obtain rights for one of the from the attic entries. i sent the inquiry on to the original entrant and a few months later saw the image used in a chevy add during the 2011 world series. it's the image at the 40 second mark and was the 2008's 3rd place from the attic winner. never before was the mission of the everyman, to get images out there that otherwise weren't out there, ever more succintcly realized. pretty dang neat.



further, i've since found out it caused a bit of a stir as the commercial's creators were accused of lifting the concept from a website. Did Chevy Steal This Commercial Idea From a Popular Blog?. noting they used the everyman image in demostration.

part three

my dining room is collaged with photography from around the world. occasionally a visitor to our home will stroll through this room and exit asking wondrously if the same person took all of those photos. laughingly, we explain the source. i will then add that if a single eye captured that wildly diverse collection of imagery they would be one of the best regarded photographers of our time. sometimes at dinner we play a game where someone will say something like, "how many frogs?" or "how many airplanes" and without looking at the walls everyone at the table has to guess how many pictures containing the noted item are on display. after everyone guesses, a eye-scanning inventory is made. also, a for sure favorite for my kids is to point out all the naked people pictures to visiting kids.

truth is i now have enough photography i could cover virtually every bare space of my home. i've been trying to convince marty to let me do themes throughout the house, like, i'm dying to decopauge the bathroom with photos of bathrooms from around the world, wallpapering every inch of plastered space, including the ceiling with images of toilets and people using toilets (yep, i got 'em). she's held consistently resistant to this design direction over the years. i've promised her that were she to green light collaging the full home, we could be on our city's house tour and be known as 'that picture house'. this surprisingly holds zero appeal for her (i think she imagines the expense of replacing all the broken frames from the kids knocking them off their nails in their rough and tumble way of life). so instead of consuming the entire house, i continue to tweak the display in the dining room, the one room marty has given me full control over, adding more photos each year as well as rotating what is displayed from year to year, pulling new photos from boxes that hold the overflow.

given the laughable overstock of great imagery, around 30,000 images at this time, it has become a near annual tradition to contemplate winding the operation down. i mean is there really going to be a twentieth annual everyman? a thirtieth? each time i walk down this path i of course pull up the site and spin through its pages. this activity sucks me in like it has done to many a web tourist before. i marvel at the range and creativity and vividness of the images. the activity inevitably makes me remember the numerous random compliments i've received in my inbox many of which express their adoration of the everyman and how it is their favorite contest. my all-time favorite email came from a former student who was studying abroad. she said she was sitting in a cabin (somewhere in europe, i can't recall where) talking with other students from around the world. one of them told the group of this great photo contest they loved called the everyman. my student was giddy to share that she not only knew the creator but had seen 'the dining room' that showcased the imagery. and every now and again i recall what was probably the most significant email to ever appear in the everyman inbox. it came from a woman who described an office ritual where she and a group of co-workers gathered around a desk at lunchtime and looked through the entries. she explained that the next image in the gallery would be pulled up and the group would take it in and then make their comments about it, discussing the merits or weaknesses of the image and/or title. she said they protected the pace in which they moved only doing so many each day as to not run out of images for the next day, week, month. this email curiously arrived when i was closer than ever to ending the contest. i was dreading the amount of work and effort i was about to undertake in announcing another year. that one crazily-timed note saved the everyman that year (and thus every subsequent year). speaking of timing, i just received an email yesterday day while crafting this post asking if i ran any more photo contests because they liked this contest better than the others for amatuers they were finding and hoped that i ran or knew of others like it. so between the love of the imagery and the supportive audience, this annual ritual of contemplating ending the everyman becomes a more futile exercise with every passing year which i guess means there probably will be a twentieth and even thirtieth everyman. especially as long as i have viable candidates for the everyman spirit award.

but to be fully honest, the biggest reason to push on is the quiet faith i have that one year marty will break down and let me take over the bathroom.

part two

every day i walked the bare, lifeless walls of my home. and every day i had more samples of curious photography i'd seen casually existing in other people's homes swimming through my brain's art gallery. unfortunately, the moment i decided to announce i was holding a photo contest is not very crisp in my mind. i just remember saying on my personal website that i was holding a photo contest. the contest parameters stated that whoever sent me the best picture, as judged by me and few friends, in the next sixty days would win a hundred dollars. and by entering, you retain ownership of your photo but allow me to hang it up in my home. those few sentences pretty well sum of the extent of the early definition (ref).

the first year received forty-two entries. all coming from people who had eaten dinner in my home. i asked two friends if they would look at the photos and tell me their favorites. together, the three of us juried the entries and picked our favorites. i compiled the results and announced the winners. i sent the number one guy a hundred bucks and hung a dozen pictures up in my dining room.

a year later i received an email from someone asking if i would be holding the photo contest again. it hadn't even occurred to me to do it twice but in thinking on it for three minutes, thought why not and announced the 2nd annual everyman. this time i received 80 entries, almost a perfect doubling of the first year, and most excitingly, a few from folks who i didn't know, from far west as california and as far east as new york.

now this year, i did something that would forever change the everyman. i emailed a guy whose website i read. he occasionally posted photographs, some of which were quite spectacular by my eye and right in the wheelhouse of my modest affair. i didn't hear back from him but hours before the deadline, my inbox chimed with an email from him that contained two entries. i can't verbalize the quiet, fist-pumping thrill this produced in my dark, lonely office (oh internet!).

me and my two pals again evaluated the entries and i announced the results. the fella from new york, one jason kottke, took third place. later that day on his personal website he made a post that said, "Third place, woo!. the 2nd place entry is my favorite." the post included a link to my results page. before this link, my site on the day of the big reveal had 37 visitors. they next day saw more the 1,500. and the day after that more than 3,500. seven days after the link the everyman was on the front page of the usa today, named the site of the day. granted the by line with the honor said, "some crazy guy in st. louis is giving away his own money to collect art for his new home." not exactly how my mother would have written it up. the next year saw 1,200 hundred entries. and the next saw 2,000. this continued for awhile until i received an email from spain asking if they could enter. on that day the everyman went international and the entries continued to climb, peaking at 7,700 entries from 80 countries a few years later.

this volume proved too much work for me and my judges and i had to dial it back a bit. these days, the contest has a 2,000 entry cap which seems to be a happy number for all involved.

part 4. the future

part one

some months after buying my house, i stopped at a friend's place to pick him up. after being let in, he asked me to wait a few moments while he finished getting ready. we talked, loudly between the rooms we were in. during the several minutes we did this, i walked around the living room taking in the books and baubles in the space. after scanning the bookshelves and walls, a snapshot on the coffee table caught my eye. it showed a close-up shot of a guy taking a large bite out of a plum. much of what would usually be captured in such a composition was tightly cropped, removing most of the extraneous details. but the unusual photo possessed a surprising amount of mood and emotion. i envisioned it blown up, fifteen feet tall, thirty feet wide in an urban art gallery framed by a stark expanse of concrete wall, people with wine glasses milling before it, discussing the merits and gestalt of the photo.

TROY
hey. this is a great picture.

CHRIS
what? which one.

TROY
the one on the coffee table.

CHRIS
what?

TROY
the guy eating the plum.

CHRIS
oh. that's a goof. we pulled it from the set to throw it out.

TROY
what?! you're throwing this out?

CHRIS
yes. it was an accident.

TROY
but it's a great shot.

CHRIS
you think so?

TROY
yeah i do.

CHRIS
well, you can have it. like i said we are just going to throw it out.

TROY
really? i can i have it?

this marks the moment the first two neurons joined and with help from complementary neurons sitting in the wings giving it mass is when the everyman truly first came into being. after this chance moment, the act of studying photography anywhere i went, whether properly framed, magneted to the fridge or messily strewn about a desk became an official pastime of mine. in little time i came to realize that great, or interesting at least, photography quietly existed everywhere, but was being seen virtually nowhere.

part 3. the early years

over the years i've been asked a time or two about how the everyman photo contest got started. just about every time i've recounted the tale i've told a highly abbreviated version. now, as it's more than a decade mature and the memories are in peril of being handed their walking papers, i thought i should capture the history as i recall it before my brittle synapses lose the ability to recall it. so, this week, in honor of the 13th public opening of the galleries, i will recount how my 2nd most prized digital creation came into being. the first soil got turned ...

after marty and i moved from our apartment into our house. once settled, my single largest complaint about home ownership did not deal in lawn-care, failed wiring, or leaky faucets but with empty walls. the apartment we had just left had a ridiculous number of windows with essentially three of the four walls consisting of nothing but window after window, the only plastered wall in the 1920's structure being the one running down the middle of the building separating the side by side apartments. so after years of a windowed apartment, the unexpected sprawl of bland, soulless walls made our first home not warm and inviting as i'd hoped for but sad and bleak. when i asked marty about it, she gazed about as if seeing it for the first time and confessed she hadn't noticed, not one bit. at the time, i still possessed enough youthful marital optimism that i thought by simply raising the point i planted a seed of discontent in my wife but the green stalk never broke ground. even today, marty could care less if our walls and halls were as stark as they were in our first twenty four hours of possession. i reckon this adds to why marriage will always hold an element of unpredictability.

as you'd expect, just as my zeal did not move her, her lack of interest did not sway me from my vision (e.g. marital deadlock) so when i saw the flyer for an art fair in a nearby huey-huey suburb, i pitched it to marty as a way to get out on a nice day. after walking the tents on blocked-off streets, i brought marty back to my favorite display and began talking up the work. with her prior zeal she said the photos were 'nice'. sensing no love-affair on the horizon i told her i thought we should get a couple images for the house. being an understanding partner, she agreed. so i procured two large images for a startling sum of five hundred dollars and left feeling like i was about to repair the struggling mood of my house forever.

moments after walking through the door i set to finding the perfect spot for my grandiose exhibit. i found it and immediately moved to the framing and hanging and when complete stood back and took it in. the wall was spectacular, alive even. but as i turned and surveyed the surrounding space, which is another way of saying 'the rest of the house', the message stood every bit as bleak as before my renovation. as i walked the rooms and hallways and contemplated how much i just spent to cover the one little nook, and did the quick math of what it would take to cover all the other little nooks, the reality of my bland and boring house set in. unhealthy as the confession sounds, i found the situation surprisingly unsettling.

part 2. conception

you would think the message for kids to get dressed would be trivial, something like 'go get dressed' trivial. not so. in our house, we are required to use three different calls to robe oneself.

ANTHONY
anfer. go get dressed. and please wear underwear this time.

ALEX
aleo. go get dressed. and wear something you haven't worn in the last seven days please.

BELLA
baya. go get dressed. and please don't leave your discarded clothes in the hallway.

late in the summer bella and i began a new father-daughter ritual. on saturday nights she and i, after the boys go to bed, stay up late and watch a movie. the original vision was to have them all be horror/suspense films, something bella holds ravenous interest in given her passion for writing scary stories. i'm sure i've previously commented on the great boon and surprise awaiting parents when their children get old enough to engage in more mature, globally entertaining activities. i sometimes had the sense i'd be stuck watching the buddies dog-movie franchise forever and ever. in a semi-related aside, a friend told me of a time he was parked on the couch watching tosh.0, a show that definitely falls outside of the sunday disney movie realm if you're not familiar, when his twelve year old daughter came in and asked if she could watch with him. he looked at her, then at the screen, then back at her and said, "you can watch until i get uncomfortable that you're watching, then you have to leave." there's a special beauty to honest answers that dancing around a reply can never match. but back to father-daughter movie night. thus far, we've watched:

• poltergiest
• the lost boys
• the house at the end of the street
• sixth sense
• the others
• getaway (seen in theater on our ms150 weekend)
• in time
• the little girl who lives down the lane

when bella was pushing for horror/suspense films, i agreed but said i got to set the initial tone as i didn't intend to dive directly into Saw or Paranormal Activity and wanted more of a natural buildup. so i chose what i thought was a safe but entertaining selection with poltergiest. bella did not like it pretty much from the moment the tree attacked the boy. it seems kids don't give much merciful latitude to dated-looking special effects. in my next pick i hedged with the 80's-boy-candy flick Lost Boys. it proved to not be much of a hedge because within minutes bella said, "vampires? really dad?". how exactly was i to know that vampires were so last generation? the cute boys bought me a bit of slack but not enough to save me from getting benched from picking our third movie.

bella chose one she had watched with a girlfriend at a sleepover. my faith in a movie two sleep-deprived twelve year olds were giddy about was not high and i expected a totally re-done, predictable and second-rate tale. not only were my few "let me guess" predictions dead wrong, the movie had me tense and squirming like a tittering twelve year old at a sleepover. so in the end the score stood bella one, dad none. to restore my daughter's faith in my ability to select a movie i had to go to the big guns and pull out The Sixth Sense which, of course, completely blew her away (man is that movie masterfully done!).

the next ones were nothing special until i stumbled upon this seventies film called the little girl who lives down the lane staring a thirteen year old jodie foster and youthful martin sheen. it was quite good but both bella and i had dropped jaws when jodie foster's character stripped naked and climbed into bed with her co-star. to bella's shocked face, i confessed i didn't know (1) there would be nudity from a child not much older than bella or (2) that it was even legal to show a child not much older than bella naked in a film in the first place. i believe bella's exact words were, "dad, i could see her little boobies bouncing when she walked. you made me watch that." re-benched.

obviously, if you know of any good, father-daughter (nudity-free!!!) suspense films we'd love the recommendations.

the boys and i were watching star trek, the original, after dinner. we're slowly working our way through the franchise starting at the very beginning. we were piled up on my desk chair, me on the seat and the boys each sitting on an armrest leaning on me. during the show i passed some post-dinner gas. moments later a big fight broke out in the show. i commented on the suddenness of the melee to which anthony (7) said casually, "i think they're fighting because of your smelly fart".