The J.R.S. #8 - Tying Your Shoes, The Peace Awareness Labyrinth, & Looking Like Lil Dicky
Happy Birthday Isaac Newton! Only 27 days until our first Blue Moon of 2018. Those two facts are unrelated, just wanted to give everyone some science. Welcome to The J.R.S – the newsletter that reviews life so you don’t have to.
This edition is jam-packed with optimism, objectives, and all the wide-open opportunity that 2018 represents. Sit back, throw away those black-eyed peas you made on Jan 1st, and feast your eyes on the first J.R.S. of the New Year.
Tying Your Shoes
"Fun Knots"
Shoe style correlates perfectly with the bell curve of life. As a toddler, everything is Velcro, then there's a magical moment when you learn how to tie your shoes, and the gates of Payless are cast wide open, beckoning you for the next sixty years.
When you're good and old, it becomes more and more socially acceptable to wear shoes that mirror what you wore as an infant. Velcro shoes return, and the circle of shoe life is complete.
It's the top of the shoe bell curve that is worth discussing. I'm speaking about shoes with laces and the silent minority of lacers to which I belong.
As a youngster, most are taught to tie their shoes in the classic "loop, swoop, and pull" method (referred to as LSP). Simple, reliable, and so easy, a six-year-old can grasp the basics.
My lace education - lacecation if you will - involved the other school of thought when it comes to shoe rope dancing. The elegant, the elaborate, the urbane - the Bunny Ears.
While the LSP method is quick and easy, the Bunny Ears take a true grasp of not one, but two perfect circles. You must possess magician-like prestidigitation when intricately weaving the two ears around one another to end up with a snug and strongly tied lace, showcasing a feat of woven acrobatics that wows and awes crowds to this day.
Or at least I'd like to think that people would be in awe of the near serpentine dance I perform with dueling strings, but when I have spoken with colleagues about my preferred method of tying, I've been met with disbelief mixed with indignation.
The Church of LSP has a wide and far reach, defying boundaries of race, gender, and language. Somehow the LSP has crept into the far corners of the globe, while the gospel of The Bunny Ears has fallen on deaf...ears.
Today I take a stand and put my elegantly-laced foot down. No more will LSPers mock followers of The Bunny Ears. We stand resolute in the beauty of our shoe tying methodology, and our defiance in the face of conformity makes us the true rebels.
So I challenge all of you, especially those who have worshiped at the altar of Loop, Swoop, and Pull, to use 2018 as an opportunity to question your beliefs when it comes to superior shoelace tying.
They say you can never really know another person until you walk a mile in their shoes, but before one can take that first step, it's important to lace up.
Tying Your Shoes - 3 out of 5 Stars
The Peace Awareness Labyrinth
"Tragically unrelated to the David Bowie Film"
2018 is here, and like most of us, I'm doing my dandiest to put 2017 behind me and walk into 2018 with positivity and hope. One of the things I'm attempting to do this year is simply - more. More friends, more writing, more adventures, more!
With that in mind, I opened up my trusty 5 Every Day app on my iPhone 5. It's an excellent app that does exactly as advertised; it lists five neat things happening in Los Angeles that day. As luck would have it, I saw that there was an intriguing activity titled the "Peace Awareness Labyrinth and Gardens".
I like all those words, and after investigating the minimal amount, I saw that the PAL&G passed some basic adventure criteria for me. It was:
- Free
- Close
- Didn't have any overt mentions of crystals
A reservation was made, and when the appropriate time came, I trekked from Venice to the West Adams district of LA and found myself signing in for the tour at the Peace Awareness Labyrinth & Gardens.
The PAL&G is a fenced-in compound that immediately places you in a different mindset from the hustle and bustle of Los Angeles. An Italian-style villa, the front of the house has an elegant staircase that delivers you onto a sweeping patio.
Our group was in the single digits, and after some awkward milling around, our tour guide arrived. I can't remember his name, but he was in his late fifties or early sixties, and he had that excitement and enthusiasm that you only find in recovered addicts or the deeply religious.
Immediately I suspected that I had unwittingly signed up for a cult.
My suspicions were slightly assuaged when our guide began to take us through the house. Originally built in 1910 by a distinguished Italian family that made their fortune on wine, the house had strong echoes of their homeland. The ceilings were covered in ornate paintings of cherubs and muses delivering grapes and good harvests all around.
As we received architectural information about the Villa, our guide peppered in details about the Movement of Spiritual Inner Awareness - the group that owned the Villa since 1974, and the order that he was part of.
Led by a mythological figure (Not quite L. Ron Hubbard), the Movement embraced meditation and the idea of Soul Transcendence. I listened with skepticism, but I do enjoy the objective of finding peace within.
Our tour guide was wearing a "Life is Good" branded hat, so I believe he had already achieved transcendence.
The tour continued, and I learned that the house was owned by the famed Hollywood Director and Choreographer, Busby Berkeley after the Italian family moved out. When you think of elaborate 1930's dance scenes, think Busby. He was the guy behind hundreds of chorus girls kicking and pirouetting and has a few bars named after him.
He also had six wives in total, two of whom lived with him in the Villa. So there's also that.
As the hippie era ended in the early 70's, the Movement purchased the Villa. The original plan was to function as an Ashram, but from what I gleaned, the house just became a huge commune, as it is today, albeit on a smaller scale.
The back of the house opens up to a large reflecting pool and their namesake, the Labyrinth and Gardens. The Labyrinth wasn't what I expected it to be - a large hedge maze à la The Shining or The Secret Garden. Instead, it was an intricately designed pattern in a circle on the ground.
Wary as I was, the guide's genuine happiness and enthusiasm was infectious, and he encouraged me to walk the Labyrinth. He said there was no wrong way, just simply take the path until you reach the middle, and then return, following the same way you came.
I put some good intentions about the upcoming year in my mind and began my journey around the Labyrinth. It was a blend of meditation and the fleeting moments I have while running when my mind is shut off.
It took me 20 minutes to make it to the center and back, and after exchanging a high five with our tour guide, I returned to my parked car, full of hopes for 2018 and the knowledge that just like his hat says, life is good.
The Peace Awareness Labyrinth - 4 out of 5 Stars
Looking Similar to Lil Dicky
"Never mistaken for, just mentioned"
A few years ago, I was speaking with a coworker about rap music. He was a fairly good freestyler, a skill I have zero talent in, and he brought up a recent freestyle that he thought highly of.
Moments into the video, the CEO of the company came into the room, looked at the video, looked at me, and said "you know, you look exactly like that guy".
In the game of "you know who you look like", I never turn up a winner. It's normally a comparison of Jewish-looking men, or men with prominent, or as I like to call it, Roman noses. Here's a quick rundown of people to whom I've been compared:
Noah Wyle: One of my aunts lived with us for a time when I was growing up. She was an amazing woman, and made one of the biggest impacts in my young life, that being, telling my mother that it was okay for me to wear jeans to Thanksgiving. And just as quickly as it began, my relationship with khakis was oh so delightfully snuffed out.
E.R. was in its prime years, and my aunt lovingly told me that I looked like Dr. John Carter. If people went back to comparing me to Noah Wyle, I'd be just fine.
Screech: Freshman year of college, my friends and I were almost arrested. We'd been smoking copious amounts of weed in our car on a road trip when we were rear-ended. To add to the situation, a police cruiser idled next to us as we were crunched from behind.
The officer came to check on us, checked on the other driver, and then came back to talk to four shell-shocked 20-year-old boys about the odor. One thing led to another, and I ended up standing on the highway, confessing to the kind gentleman that I had loose bits of the plant known as marijuana in my sock.
Just pot in my sock, no bag, no nothing. He found this quite comical and called his partner over. His partner laughed at my less than Escobar-like concealment plan, then screwed one eyeball closed at me and said
"You know who you look like? Screech - that's who!"
I was let go, but not before the cops had to pile all four us in the back of their car and dump us at a gas station to be picked up. Of course, every guy in the backseat was given a Saved By the Bell name.
Young Robert De Niro: While living in Italy, I visited one of my best friends, Vicki, who was living in Seville. I ended up staying with a Spanish family, renting out their spare room. This family had seven daughters and one son, and I didn't speak any Spanish, so when I arrived, Vicki accompanied me to translate.
One by one, daughter after daughter paraded into the kitchen, and as Italian custom dictated, I stood up, stammered "Hola, Me llamo Joey" and then kissed them on both cheeks. Then the son arrived, a handsome lad about my age, and of course, I stood up, said my bit and tried to kiss him.
As you probably guessed, he dodged my lips and quickly told me that men don't kiss other men in Spain unless for a very specific reason. The women in the room (now nine - the seven daughters, Vicki, and the mother) were dying laughing. Then the Father walked in, a large and jolly man with a gravelly voice.
Vicki, without missing a beat, said, "Lookout, this is Joey, and he might try to kiss you!"
The Father smiled, grabbed my face and planted two slobbery kisses on my cheeks and then shouted "Robert Deniro!”
Now I've arrived at my most recent semi-doppelganger. Dave Burd, aka Lil Dicky - a white Jewish rapper who got his start at an ad agency rapping his monthly progress reports in video form.
The separate Lil Dicky call outs have grown in the last year. I ordered a coffee recently and the cashier did the eyeball squint and then asked me if I was Lil Dicky. I told him no, but I'm okay with the comparison. Flattered even, Lil Dicky is taller and skinnier than me, so that's neat.
There are worse people to be mistaken as - like Screech for instance.
Looking Similar to Lil Dicky - 2 out of 5 Stars
That's a full lid on this version of The J.R.S! Thank you so much for gracing me with your eyes. Don’t hesitate to telegram me at JRSdiaries@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts, opinions, or your intentions for the New Year. Like most wedding DJs, I do take review requests.
Finally, if you like what you read, tell your friends - trying to get Internet famous Y'all.
Love you, miss you!
Joey