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Menaced By Cows

May 18, 2011 in Travel, Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | No comments

I’ve spent the past week (?) I have no idea anymore, at my dear pal Katharine Dever’s place in Bristol, UK.

Last time I saw Katharine we drove to San Francisco from LA for the night, attended an event she was part of, raised a wee bit of hell, discovered our mutual adoration of Dolly Parton and made the long trip back home.

This time we watched “9-5″ and narrowly avoided being trounced by cows in a field near her house.

Climbing a barbed wire fence = uninvited

They don't look scary but they kind of really were

I don’t know if it was because we were trespassing on their turf or if they sensed that we’d dined on beef stroganoff the night before, but they, all 20 of them, ran at us at once.

The evil stroag

I started writing a novel a couple years ago and the problem with it is that I’ve got these great characters who I love and really enjoy writing, but I’ve got no plot.  They’re all just sitting there, staring at me, growing into real people, spitting out witty one liners, while they wait for me to give them something to DO.

It reminds me a bit of this post.

Because nothing actually happened after the cows ran up and scared the crap out of us.  They just started sniffing around and then we took a bunch of pictures with them and then we went for a walk.

Doop de doo.

But I have loved loved loved my stay here.  Katharine is one of my favorite people and England is just so…English – stone houses, regal gardens, blustery winds, proper manners, hilarious verbiage:

Ah it’s crap, it’s pants

Let me just get my bits and pieces together

You want some crisps then?

I showed up for a few days and ended up not really leaving.  But tomorrow I finally go to  London to see another friend, then California for some meetings and then………………it remains to be seen.

Plots.  Who needs them?

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How To Do It All

March 9, 2011 in Inspiration, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

I went to a college where we took one class at a time. We basically learned a sememster’s worth of work in 3 1/2 weeks and at the end of each “block” we’d get a break for 5 days. My beloved alma mater, The Colorado College, taught me:

1.) One must take a serious vacation every month
2.) How to drink beer out of a funnel
3.) How to get a crapload of stuff done in a very short amount of time.

It really proved that old saying which I’m not even really sure is old and I’m not really sure exactly how it went but it’s something like:
If you have something to do, it will take you as long as you have to complete it.

So, if you have, oh, let’s just say hypothetically, a week to finish your book proposal, it will take you a week. If you have 6 months, it’ll take you six months. It’s like when we eat when we’re not hungry – whatever you give us, we’ll keep putting in our mouths.

As you may have picked up on, I just finished my first Book Proposal in a Week Bootcamp and even I, The Queen of Cram, was blown away by how successful so many people in the group were. And I’m going to share with you some of the reasons why.

Not only is there real power in DECIDING that you’re going to finish something by a certain goal date, no matter what, but we really tapped into some great tricks on how to get a lot done in a small amount of time. Here are some tools you can start using right now to get whatever it is that you’ve been putting off done NOW:

1. Find Your Prime Time
My sister is not a morning person. I remember when we were growing up, watching her try and crawl out of bed for school as if she’d just been beaten with a club. Meanwhile, every morning I’d wake up, my eyes would pop open, I’d spring out of bed, ready to go, chatty chatterson while Jill would fumble around like the walking dead.

Hence, I believe we are born a certain way and we all shine at certain times of the day. Figure out which is your prime time and make sure you do everything you can to get the bulk of whatever you have to do done at that time.

2. Chunk Out Your Time
If you say, “I’m gonna spend the entire day writing,” you will most likely spend the entire day:
Sitting down to write
Checking your emails
Cleaning your bathroom
Calling your mom
Writing
Making a lasagna
Taking a walk
Re-organizing your closet
Writing
Going to bed

We waste so much time when we set goals that are too big. It’s like lifting weights – if you lift something way too heavy, you won’t budge it. And if you lift something too lite, you won’t grow. Find a chunk of time that pushes you but isn’t too far out of your reality and hold yourself to it.

3. Set a Timer
When you find your golden hour and you create chunks of time to do your work, I highly recommend setting a timer, dorky as this may sound. Because here’s the thing – when looking for a distraction, we get very creative. And desparate. Constantly checking the time to see if your time is up becomes a distraction, so setting a timer allows you to focus that much more. Plus, if you get a timer that ticks, it can cheer you on and make you feel like you’re racing the clock.

IMPORTANT TIMER USAGE NOTE: Once that timer is set, you are unauthorized to get up for any reason – check your emails, answer the phone, pee, stretch, do anything that isn’t directly related to the task at hand.

4. Get Into Reality
Oh the drama we create for ourselves! I can’t tell you how many clients I’ve worked with who are completely freaked out by how much they have to do and there is no time and if only they didn’t have to blah they could blah and blah blah blah…..this is when it’s time for a reality check. Really sitting down and looking at what you have in front of you is an incredibly calming practice. Take a serious look at how long each thing on your list will take you. Then figure out what you can toss. Then figure out what you can delegate. Then put them in order of priority. Then do them. I promise you, you’ll be very pleasantly surprised. And finished before you know it.

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How to Make Your Books Bestsellers, Seth Godin Style

September 16, 2010 in Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

I was going to make today’s post a little sneak preview of the call I’m doing later this afternoon where I will divulge the secrets of 3 of my favorite and insanely successful bloggers and nonfiction authors (which you can sign up for HERE).

I started by writing about one of the heaviest hitters of them all, Seth Godin, and got so sucked into his story of how he became a bestselling author many times over that now there’s no room for the others because I would like to leave the house at some point today and I’m still in my robe as I write this.

:-/

But his ideas are so interesting and different that I had to share them all with you. As you read them, you’re unauthorized to think, well, he knows about computers and he has a big list and he’s already an established writer – all of his ideas can apply to you no matter where you’re at if you get creative.

This afternoon on the call, I’ll go into some other methods that other people used, but right now, it’s Sethapalooza.

This post is taken from a video I watched of Seth’s presentation from O’Reilly Tools of Change for Publishing Conference, New York City, NY, February 11, 2008 called 10 Bestsellers: Using New Media, New Marketing, and New Thinking to Create 10 Bestselling Books

TIP #1: GIVE 1/3 OF YOUR BOOK AWAY FOR FREE

After talking his publisher into letting him give 1/3 of this book away for free, Seth spent $400 building a semi-crappy website for it and told people to send him an email and he’d email them the first 1/3 of the book for free. He did this in one really long email that, in several places, said click here if you’re tired of reading this and you’d rather just buy the whole book. That’s all he did to market it and ¼ of a million people took him up on the free sample, then enough people bought it to make it a bestseller. (If you’re already freaking out that you could never reach that many people, check out my post on driving traffic to your blog HERE) In hindsight, he wished he’d said “I’ll send you something every week the rest of your life until you die,” and continued selling things to these same people, but alas, he didn’t.

TIP #2: GIVE YOUR ENTIRE BOOK AWAY FOR FREE


Because this book is all about the concept that ideas that spread that win, he decided to focus on the spreading and give it away for free. He went out and spent anoather $400 on another semi-crappy website and told people they could download the whole book for free on a PDF file. Millions of people went ahead and downloaded it for free, and loved it, but hated reading it in that format. So he printed up a hardcover copy that he sold for $40 on Amazon and in limited distribution at a few other places and it became an Amazon bestseller because everyone already knew about it. He talks about how the book was a souvenir – if people like an experience, they want a souvenir to keep. This is how he thinks you should look at books.

TIP #3: MAKE IT SUPER CHEAP AND DO IT BEFORE ANYONE ELSE DOES


This book was an ebook about website design that he sold only at Amazon for a couple of bucks. Because it was one of the first ebooks on this topic and was cheaper than anything else out there, people were willing to try it out and because it was awesome, the word spread and more and more people bought it. He talks about how volume has to be one of your goals. The more a book sells, the easier and easier it becomes to sell more because of word of mouth.

TIP #4: DON’T DO IT THE TRADITIONAL WAY
I just realized I forgot to make note of which book this was and instead of sift through the video again for who knows how long until I find it, I’m just gonna go ahead and leave it out. All you need to know is that he decided to go the traditional route with this one, dropped a wad building a fancy website, put ads on it, put up billboards in San Francisco, basically played by book publishing rules and it didn’t do that great because, as he says, he didn’t focus enough on using some of these other tools that had brought him such huge success before.

TIP #5: USE PACKAGING THAT SCREAMS “LOOK AT ME!”


This time around he decided to self-publish and get crazy with his packaging. He started by publishing an excerpt of the book in Fast Company Magazine , a magazine he was a columnist for that had 1/2 million readers, and offered everyone a copy for free if they sent in 5 bucks for shipping and handling. He stated that there were only a limited amount of copies and mailed the book out in a purple milk carton. Not in a box, just in the milk carton itself, so that when people got it, it became a conversation piece. If it was sitting on their desk at the office or their table at home, people had to ask “what the hell is that?” He mailed out 5 thousand, all of which had the URL to his website on the carton itself next to some copy explaining that if you wanted your own copy for free, you could only get them in bulk 12 at a time. So you had to send in 5 bucks for shipping and handling each, but the book itself was free. This way, people would get their copy and give the other 11 away, thereby spreading the word and starting a conversation about his ideas.

TIP #6: MAKE THE BOOK THE FOUNDATION FOR YOUR BLOG


This one was all about his blog. He built a blog talking about marketing, elaborating on the ideas that were in the book so that anyone following his blog eventually wanted to buy the book to get his original ideas. He based this on the method the Freakanomics guys were using. Today they blog about stuff that’s not even in the book, but if you get into their blog you’ll want to learn about the foundation of what they’re talking about and buy the book.

TIP #7: FIGURE OUT HOW TO BE MUTUALLY BENEFICIAL


Books sell much better when other people write about them than when the author writes about them. So if you write content that will hugely benefit people, they’ll write about it because it’ll make them look good (sort of like what I’m doing right now). With this book he decided to do this in person and go on a book tour. He posted on his blog and said he’d come to your city and give a talk if you organized it and guaranteed to get 500 people in the room. The people who set up the talks made no money but increased their status in the community by organizing the them. Everyone of them has written Seth and told him how those connections helped them immensely. With this method he helped his fans, spread the word and sold thousand of books.

TIP #8: JOINT VENTURE WITH OTHER PEOPLE AND GIVE IT AWAY FOR FREE


This is one of the best ways to increase your exposure – piggyback on other people’s lists. For this book Seth hired someone to contact bloggers who wanted to host a podcast to join him for an hour long conversation. He asked them to invite all their readers, thereby getting Seth new exposure, giving valuable content to the blogger’s readers, making the bloggers look like superstars and then created another cheapo website to send everybody to where the podcasts were given away for free.

Here’s a short recap of all these ideas:
• Books are souvenirs – there’s nothing in a book that you can’t get online for free anyway so if you make the content good enough, people will want to own a copy.
• Permission is the only asset – deliver messages to people who want to get them. If they don’t hear from you and they complain, that’s permission. You want to appeal to your perfect audience and provide them with valuable content, not inflict yourself on people who aren’t your target market.
• Conversations are marketing. If you can make people talk about what you’re doing because you’re writing brilliant stuff, then you win.
• Words for readers, not readers for words. You’re not in the business of finding readers for your words. You need to find words for your readers. Once you build the permission base, ask yourself what do my readers want next? When you have a dedicated list, go out and find things they want to read about and the word will spread.
• Blogs work. It’s the nature of dripping ideas into a place where they can spread. Ideas online will spread. If you’re an author who doesn’t have an idea that will spread, you shouldn’t write the book.
• It’s not about selling books. Focus on putting out great ideas, then focus on creating interest and excitement around those ideas and the books will sell themselves.

Authors are idea merchants. Ideas that spread win. Free ideas spread faster. The way you monetize is buy selling souvenirs. This, she is the Seth Godin credo.

And now I’m going to get dressed.

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How to Drive Traffic to Your Blog

September 8, 2010 in Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

sixty mile, nine day Chinese traffic jam

This photo is of a traffic jam in China that spanned over 60 miles and lasted 9 days.

SIXTY MILES AND NINE DAYS!

Ow. Ch.

As someone who is only mildly interested in technology, when I first started researching all the ins and outs of blogging and driving traffic and SEO and analytics and pingbacks and Technorati postings, it elicited the same response that imagining myself stuck in a Chinese traffic jam did.

So, let me begin by saying that there are officially 8 bazillion ways to drive traffic to your blog, but I am only going to give you some that I find most useful.

Some are easy to understand, and some are much more technically oriented than others and will have you, if you’re anything like me, glazed over and playing with your lip in lieu of actually incorporating them into your blog yourself, but you need to know about them so I’m including them.

Here goes nothin!

How To Create Your Own Chinese Traffic Jam:

At the very tippy top of the list is the most important of all traffic drivers. You have no business blogging, at all, if you don’t make sure to follow this seemingly simple and obvious rule:

PROVIDE AWESOME CONTENT!

It seems like a no-brainer but if you’ve ever nosed around the blogsphere, you understand why I’m putting it in all caps.

Here are some tips on how to write good content:
- Write stuff that’s topical, that people are searching for right now
- Break news if possible, if you hear about something insane and newsworthy, get on it before anyone else does
- Also write stuff that’s got a long shelf life, that people can refer to years after it’s written (and send their friends to read long after it’s written)
- Make your posts easy and fun to read, break up paragraphs, use bullet points, put in pictures and video
- Do interviews with well known, searchable people who will hopefully link to your post from their own, highly-visited blog
- Do something ongoing, give people a reason to keep coming back. For example, if you have a mommy blog and declare September “how to get more sleep month” people will keep returning for your tips.
- Entice them at the end of each post – leave a hanging question or suggest that you’ll go deeper with your next post, share more tips, show a naked picture of grandpa, etc.
- WRITE THINGS THAT ARE USEFUL TO YOUR TARGET AUDIENCE

• Be active in forums in your area of expertise and link back to your blog

• Exchange links with other bloggers

• Submit your blog to blog directories (or have your assistant do it). This will provide the ever-hallowed links back to your blog as well as get you exposure. Here’s a great article on 20 good ones to submit to.

• Use Isnare to get your articles circulated in article directories as well as sites that offer up content for newsletter publishers.

• Make sure your blog URL is in the signature of every email you send and on all your business cards and brochures.

• Write short ebooks and allow other bloggers to give them away for free – make sure to put your blog url throughout the information and make sure to make the information GOOD.

• Be a guest writer on other blogs.

• Get an account at Technorati (an internet search engine for searching blogs) and make use of their tags in your posts.

• Submit your RSS feed to feed directories. Again, get that assistant on this. Here are some good ones.

• Bookmark your blog posts at socialposter. This will instantly submit them to multiple social driven sites at once such as digg, reddit, del.ico.us, stumbleupon, etc. so you don’t have to do each one separately.

• How you doing – you still with me? WAKE UP!

When you post a photo, make sure to write a clear description of it in the “alternate text” option (a box for this will appear when you go to insert a picture on your blog). For example, the alt text for the photo in this post should be “China’s nine day, sixty mile traffic jam” rather than “holy crap, kill me now!” It will not only let people who’s browsers are slow know what’s they should be looking at, but it will make your post more searchable.

• Encourage your readers to put your posts on all the social bookmarking sites like digg, technorati, del.ico.us, reddit, etc.

• Invite other people to chime in on a topic and post it on Craigslist, FB, Twitter, LinkedIn, everywhere you can think of. For example, invite mommys to email you with their best tip for getting sleep. Then compile the best ones, post them on your blog and ALERT the mommys whose tips you’re using that you’re using them and ask them to spread the word about the post they’re in.

• Create some sort of hilarious or shocking or otherwise noteworthy video, post it on your blog and Facebook and everywhere you can and try to get it to go viral. Make sure the URL to your blog appears in the video.

• Get the hell out of the house and network – go to seminars and meetings where your target market will be, charm them with your winning personality, talk about your blog and hand them your card.

• Come up with tasty tidbits from each post and put them on FB, Twitter and LinkedIn.

• Use keywords – figure out exactly what your target market is doing google searches for and use those words in your posts as often as possible.

• Try to come up with a good URL that includes a keyword or two. Also, buy the misspellings of your URL and forward them to your blog so if people type in the wrong thing, they can still find you.

• Make the title of your posts obvious and easily searchable rather than merely cute and witty. If you can do all three, you win, but always err on the side of searchable.

• Answer questions at Yahoo Answers to get exposure and leave people totally impressed by how smart you are.

• Get a VA (virtual assistant) and hand off as much of this to them as you can!

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This Is SO Not About You

August 27, 2010 in Inspiration, Uncategorized, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

I recently had a friend, a brilliant writer, call me in a panic because she suddenly became frozen with fear over the subject matter of her book and could no longer bring herself to write it.

Her book is, among many other splendid things, very personal, dark, and twisted, and my friend was concerned that it was too much. That it was crossing the line.

That she was exposing herself as a giant pervert freak weirdo.

This brings up a concept that’s SO important to have a firm grasp on if you’re going to get anywhere near reaching your full potential in this life as a writer, an entrepreneur, an artist and actually, as a fully realized and evolved human being in general:

One of the greatest, most powerful ways you can spend your time is actively practicing not giving a flying crap what anybody else thinks about you.

Other people’s opinions motivate every decision we make in our teens and our twenties, and as we age, if we’re moving in the right direction, our obsession with how we look to others slowly trickles away, but most people spend their lifetimes under its pointless grasp.

Meanwhile, the only questions you ever need to really consider are:

Is this something I want to be, do or have?
Is this going to take me in direction of my goal or purpose?
Is it going to violate the rights of others?

Yes, it is part of our survival instinct to care – get booted from the tribe and you will freeze or starve to death or be eaten by bears. But because we have big brains and the ability to manifest anything we set our minds to, there is another version that’s equally as plausible: get booted from the tribe and be forced to start one of your own, and even though you suffer through struggles and failures and fears, you prove yourself and create something that’s unique and exciting and more in line with who you really are and suddenly there’s a coin with your face on it or a rest stop named after you or something equally as awesome.

We all long for the comfort and safety of fitting in, and if that’s where you’re truly happy and fully realized, then bravo, but nobody who ever accomplished anything big or new or worth raising a fist in the air and screaming “hell yeah!” about did it from the comfort zone.

They risked ridicule and failure and sometimes even death. Take the Wright Brothers for example. Can you imagine how that whole thing went down?

Beula: Did you hear about poor Susan?
Agnes: Susan Wright?
Hattie: Such a disgrace! Poor thing.
Agnes: What happened?
Beula: Well, her two boys…
Hattie: As if Susan hasn’t suffered enough. Tiny little thing birthing three boys as big as buffaloes, then croup, shingles and now this…
Beula: Seems her two sons…oh dear.
Agnes: Her two sons what?!
Hattie: I heard she has bunions too…
Agnes: Spit it out already Beula!
Beaula: Well, this is going to sound as crazy as it is but they….
Hattie: And now her sons think they can fly. Such a shame.
Beula: …they think they can fly.
Agnes: Think they can fly?
Beula: Yes, her sons think they can fly. They talk of nothing else.
Hattie: She just had the house painted too. They’ll probably have to move out of town now….

Once you step away from the herd and let yourself be seen, you put yourself in front of the opinion firing squad, which is why so many people run screaming from the lives they’d so love to live.

But here’s the thing that’s so critical to remember: It’s not about you anyway. What other people think about you has nothing to do with you and everything to do with them.

I’ve gotten emails from people telling me everything from I can’t write to save my life to I’m an insensitive jerk to, and I quote, “your last name is interesting. Some people may see ‘sincere’ but all I see is the ‘sin’ part. Your life will be nothing but pain and heartache if you keep living it this way”.

I’ve also had people write in about the very same book gushing that I changed their life, that I’m their favorite writer, that they would like to get to know me in the biblical sense, etc.

So it couldn’t possibly be about the book because the book stays the same. It’s the reactions that differ.

The trick is not only not buying into the criticisms, but not buying into the hype either because neither of them are the truth. Once you do, you hand your power over to other people’s fears and insecurities and needs and stories and spend your life desperately chasing down something that isn’t even real.

All that matters is what’s true for you, and if you can tap into that and follow it without straying, you will be a mighty superhero. Everything else is just other people’s perception of reality, and that is none of your business.

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Show Me Your Badass

January 28, 2010 in Badass of the Week, Inspiration, Travel, Writing by jensincero | 3 comments

My dear pal E.J. asked me where the name Hey Little Badass came from and, once informed, suggested that it would be most Hey Little Badassy of me to not only explain it to y’all, but also to ask you to bend over and show me yours.

This blog is called Hey Little Badass because it covers anything that taps into my own little badassedness and inspires me to write – be it travel, monkey boners, transvestite Santa Clauses, people who do brave and cool things, etc.

My hope is that by writing about all the things that make me excited to be spinning around on this dear old planet of ours, I’ll inspire you to take some time to recognize, and pursue, whatever it is that floats your banana.  To tap into your own little badass (you know you have one), to whip out your ever-lovin youness, be large and in charge, huge like The Nuge, mighty tighty whitey.

Speaking of such staggering largeness, I would like to stand and salute My Most Patient and Brilliant Friend Dana Burgy Gautchi who is the kind of friend who will stay on the phone with you until 2am brainstorming names for your new blog even though you’re hideously indecisive, and selflessly offer up Hey Little Badass as yours to keep even though it came out of her brain and could make millions for her in the form of a t-shirt or maybe an action figure or something.

So there you have it.  And whilst I continue to write about badassing my way throughout SE Asia, I urge you to join me by sending in a photo of yourself in your most supreme little badassedness.

Find a picture that screams HOLY CRAP I AM SO FRIKKEN AWESOME I CAN’T STAND IT and send it to me at jen@jensincero.com.  If you’d like to ad a caption, or a brief story, we’d love to read it.

For example, here is a picture of the aforementioned E.J. letting his ass-kicking freak flag fly in perhaps my favorite picture of him ever:

I don't know about you, but this picture makes me want to run around the block about 80 times with my fist in the air.

Sorry to start by raising the bar so high, but don’t be intimidated – send me your most jaw-dropping picture of you as your most jaw-dropping self.  You do not have to be in drag with a helmet on, but you must be lit up by the big ass ball of blinding gloriousness that is you unbridled.

Can’t wait to see it!!

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If Charlize Theron Was a Beach

December 19, 2009 in Travel, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

Koh Phi Phi boat 

Nothing reminds you that you’re not in Kansas anymore like crashing through the ocean in aMr. Wet hollowed out tree trunk of sorts powered by a deafening, cranky engine spewing black soot driven by Thai Mad Max who’s probably 35 but looks 17 and whose only entertainment after making this trip eight bazillion times is seeing how wet he can get every single person on his boat.

 

I’m sitting on a plank under a blue tarp with 15 other sopping wet tourists and realize that if anything should go awry, we’d be trading in our pleasantries about where we’re from and how long we’ve been traveling for kicking each other in the head trying to get at the only 3 life vests on board.

 

It always strikes me when I leave home how reckless it is out there. The United States is like a Jewish mother in comparison to most places I’ve been, with our seat belt laws and health codes and you can’t smoke anywhere ever. Meanwhile the rest of the world is having a big ole party. I know things like pollution, food poisoning and splitting your head open on the road are lame but…come on. I really like riding in the back of a pick up truck with eight other people eating some strange meat thing on a stick watching a family of five ride by on a motorcycle. It’s so much more fun!

 

I’ve left dear old Bangkok for the island of Koh Phi Phi and I will say right now that I have never Koh Phi Phi seen beaches so beautiful in my life. Soft white sand beaches, bright green warm water, giant strange rocks jutting out of the water, mountains covered in jungles, endless coral reefs, warm breezes – it’s like the supermodel of beaches. I’m even staying in a bamboo hut on stilts five feet from the sand and drink the milk right out of a coconut through a straw every morning. It’s almost embarrassing.

 

I was planning on being in Vietnam but somehow lumped it in with all the other places I’m going that allow you to get your visa at the border, so now I have to wait for some guy at some government office to look over my paperwork. And it was either wait it out in Bangkok or head down here.  Hmmm….

 

Anyway, back to my five hour tour of Phi Phi and the surrounding islands. So I’m on this boat thing and we’re being literally herded around – here, Monkey Island! We all pile off as told and take pictures of the monkeys along with about 10 other boats full of tourists who’ve pulled up alongside us. Then it’s off to Bamboo Island.  Then we pull out to sea - Okay, you snorkel here!  All 80 of us in The Tourist Caravan  jump off to snorkel. Okay, Maya Bay here, one hour! He hands us all a thing of rice and kicks us off the boat. At this point it’s five hours into our trip and none of us actually want to get off the boat even though it’s seriously a tear-jerker of a beach (the actual site of the movie The Beach if you’ve ever seen it). But he’s not leaving for an hour so we all schlep to the beach that is packed with fellow tourists who I couldn’t help but notice didn’t seem quite as wet as we were.

 

And I know I probably sound complainy and I’m not proud but it’s like sitting at The Best Restaurant in The Entire World eating The Most Amazing Meal in the Entire World with The Funnest People in the Entire World on the Amalfi Coast, stoned, and an entire kindergarten class with noisemakers suddenly sits at the table right next to you. You can’t tell the story without the kindergarten class part, complainysounding or not.

 

And in general, that’s how I’m finding Thailand so far. So much incredible incredibleness but so overrun with tourists it’s hard to tell what Thailand is actually like. I have, however, only hit the tourist spots and it’s high season, so I’m going to see if I can’t shut up and dig a little deeper over here. Right afterMe Phi Phi I hit a couple more beaches that is because if they’re anything like this place, I don’t care if an entire elementary school makes it their class project to follow me around.

 

May I Come In?

November 29, 2009 in Travel, Writing by jensincero | 2 comments

How come when I’m wasted at a party, camera-wielding arm outstretched, head glued to a friend’s cheek, I always take a great picture, but when I put on make-up, brush my hair and stand against a plain white wall to try to look like a respectable adult worthy of your hire or entrance into your country or a date or something,  I look like I live under a bridge?

I needed to take a headshot for my visa for Thailand, and after about an hour of posing against every frikken white wall in my house, it occurred to me: maybe it’s not the light, maybe the real problem is that I think I’m better looking than I actually am?

How much would that suck?

Anyway, I finally got a usable shot but I won’t be trying that again without making sure my camera’s had a few beers first.

November 24, 2009 in Writing by jensincero | 1 comment

Part of getting ready to go on a big trip is making plans to see your friends before you leave.  I fly out in 10 days (!) and am not sure how I’m going to fit everybody in, but have decided to make seeing those with beards a first priority.

 

Jean Pierre reflecting his lovely wife, Shaz

I’m just so damn happy the beard is back.  Seeing a group of bearded hipsters crossing Sunset Blvd. makes me feel the way I imagine someone living in small town Alaska must feel seeing a moose wander down Main Street after a long hunting season:  Giddy, relieved, home at last.

What killjoy decided a face-full of hair was uncool anyway?  Or a pantfull for that matter?  Where did all our hair go?  What did it ever do to us that we feel compelled to go after it with razors, scissors, tweezers, chemicals, lasers, hot wax and insults?

I have half a mind to hand my body over to my hair while I’m in SE Asia, call a cease fire, see what I’m really made of.  I don’t want to die not knowing how far down my thighs my buffalo are capable of roaming.  Especially since I think I could sprout an impressive crop worthy of my Italian heritage.  I just have to decide if I’m up for the commotion it’ll cause.

I’ll never forget going to Naples, Italy for the first time when I was 7  to meet my Dad’s family.  His sister came out of the house, lifted her arms for a big whassamattayou hug and revealed a pitfull of armhair that was as obscene to my virgin, American eyes as if she’d spread her legs and wrapped my head in her crotch.  What lady has hair there?  That moment marked my loss of innoncence and caused me to sleep with my light on for the next three months.  I don’t think I ever got over it.  I’m not sure I want to be responsible for ending some poor kid’s childhood with my bikini line.

Anyway, I had brunch on Sunday with my pal Jean Pierre, film maker/beard grower extraordinaire and his lovely wife, Shaz Bennett, writer/peformer whom I will be performing a two-woman show with when I get back from my trip I’m extremely excited to report.

Then my friend J. Ryan and I went out for drinks but he showed up shaved and beardless, gravely disappointing me and reminding me just how fleeting a beard can be.  Needless to say the thrill is gone so now I’m taking anyone who lives nearby who wants to buy me a farewell beer.

Purse Aversion

November 22, 2009 in Writing by jensincero | No comments

It’s become clear to me that although I’m loving writing this new blog, it’s going to force me to perform the unthinkable act of carrying a purse.  I’ve spent my entire adult life dodging that reality because I don’t want to have to deal with the stupid thing every time I leave the house, clinging to me wherever I go like a baby monkey.  I far prefer to be hands-free, pockets bulging, keys digging into my leg.  Plus that werd.  Purse.  Ew.

But a blog requires that I carry a camera which is one piece of equipment over the line and we have no vacancies left in any of my outfits, so unless I start wearing a bigger bra, I’m going to be pursing it.

I’m telling you this fascinating piece of news because soon there will pictures and videos galore on here and it’ll all be thanks to the P word.  And I must say, I wish that I’d had my camera yesterday morning as I drove off in my car (a purse with wheels) because I got up early and joined the virulent ranks of Saturday morning yard sale goers in a quest to find a new bike.  And a purse.

I pulled up, five minutes before 8am, to a crowd attempting to push their way through some poor guy’s front gate as he yelled at them that it wasn’t eight yet and to back the hell off.  I used to be in a punk band that played for the kind of people who’d rush the stage wielding chairs over their heads with intent to beat us with them because a.) they were drunk b.) my band was really bad c.) they paid to get in, and I’d take a long evening of fending them off over an impatient garage sale crowd anyday.

Cranky, entitled senior citizens, middle aged ladies with computer print outs of every yard sale within forty miles, neighbors attempting to wink and smile their way into getting first dibs on your tired DVD collection and worn out frying pan…all showing up well before the scheduled start time, duking it out on your front lawn very early in the morning for crap you’d happily leave in the alley.  What IS that? Weren’t we at the top of the foodchain once?

Anyway, I’m pleased to report I found a bike and an ugly brown sweater, but shockingly, no purse.  I’ve decided to do my purse shopping online.

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