Blow It Out Your Porthole

Despite some initial success (meaningless ribbons and certificates) in my earliest years, I believe I officially gave up as a visual artist in 8th grade.

On the one hand, maybe I just couldn't handle not receiving constant praise on my presumably unimpressive artwork from my art teacher for the first time. On the other hand, I think he was a dick who stifled my expression.

I was excited about our landscape assignment because it was the first time I ever painted on an honest-to-gosh canvas. Something about painting on a canvas makes the process seem so much more official than doing it on paper.

While my peers took a traditional approach to the assignment, I chose to paint an island seen through a cruise ship porthole. More than half of the canvas was devoted to the interior of the cruise ship and the landscape aspect of it was kind of incidental in the background.

I thought it was a modern approach to landscapes and showed how removed we are from nature. Most people really do only experience a sight like that through glass on a boat, and I wanted to acknowledge that fact in my painting. Whether I was able to articulate that idea better or worse in 8th grade, I don't remember.

My teacher graded it poorly and called it a cop out. Okay, maybe part of the reason was because it was easier than painting an actual landscape. But all that other stuff I just said? That was a part too - a bigger part. This teacher had one idea of what a landscape could be and stomped on my creativity.

He also didn't like my mixed media collage that incorporate the lyrics to The Verve's "Bittersweet Symphony". (Looking back, maybe I was anti-capitalist before I even knew what that meant.) What a fucking buzz kill. Then again, I suppose the true mark of a great artist is not being appreciated in your own time.

I'm not sure where the porthole painting is anymore, but I wouldn't be surprised to learn it somehow made its way to an art museum because that shit is genius.

Stop and Smell the Flowers

I see an acquaintance of mine bending over in front of a giant flower pot twenty feet away from me, so I wave.

Her: I'm so embarrassed, I was hoping nobody would see me.

Me: Don't worry.

Her: I've been kind of sick lately with a cold...

Me: So your nose is clogged up?

Her: I guess?

Me: Well I thought it was cute.

Her: You thought it was cute? That I hawked a loogey?

Me: Uh, no, I thought you stopped to smell the flowers.

Her: Nope, I was spitting.

Me: Well, I can still pretend it was cute.

It's a wonder we haven't made the full jump to friends.

The Renaissance Fair

I never thought I'd attend a Renaissance Fair (because ha!) but I found myself witnessing one today by accident. I met up with some teammates for a barbecue in a park, and much to our surprise, a lot of the space was claimed by a few hundred fully costumed Ren Fair devotees.

I like people-watching, but watching people who are playing pretend is fascinating in a whole new way. This wasn't a performance for an audience (though the couple dozen of us who happened to be at the park had great seats), just adults amusing themselves and each other by sweating through heavy costumes in heat that would have called for shorts and using funny accents to say words like "exalted" and "decree."

A lot of things were going on at the end of the Middle Ages, but if you were relying on these LARPers for your information, you might think it was nothing but fencing. The men loved fighting with their swords and that took up the majority of the day. It seems like it might be more accurate if some of them were sharecropping or whatever. Then again, if they were concerned with accuracy, I probably wouldn't have seen so many of them playing with their smartphones.

And then there was the Queen! She wore the fanciest gown and a crown, and had attendants follow her around with parasols to provide her majesty with shade. I wonder how they chose the Queen and whether she got to be the Queen every time they played. When an ice cream truck came to the park's parking lot, the Queen went over to buy some and several of her attendants tagged along. I also wondered whether they were obligated to do this or wanted popsicles, too.

Although the women remained primarily in subservient positions - true to the times, I suppose - it was nice to see that the African American participants held various ranks. More than anything, however, I was just surprised that there were black people there at all. It's times like these that I recognize my underlying prejudices. White people? I expect this kind of Ren-Fair shit from them. But black people… I guess I thought that black people were cooler than that.

He Died Doing What He Loved, Part 3

I don't know this guy and I've never seen his show, but I was attracted to the headline because I'm a fan of the sentiment "He died doing what we loved."

My friends and I have made jokes (and more jokes) that we want it to be said that we died doing what we loved, no matter how horrifically we meet our demise:
"Kevin died doing what he loved: falling down an elevator shaft."
"Kevin died doing what he loved: choking on a chicken bone."
"Kevin died doing what he loved: making toast in the shower."
"Kevin died doing what he loved: skiing into a tree."

As for Shain Gandee, I was unfamiliar with the term "mudding", so I researched to see if the activity was in any way amusing. Apparently it means off-roading your truck through the mud. This search also led me to an interesting clip of Shain from his show:

Basically, Shain boasts about a time he took a girl mudding, pretended to get the truck stuck in the mud, suggested they have sex to pass the time, and then when they were finished, immediately drove out of the mud, dropped the girl at home, and never saw her again. I'm not sure I'm prepared to call it rape like some commenters since there's no indication of consent one way or another, but he did make her feel trapped and had sex with her under false pretenses, so it's definitely at least sleazy. Therefore, the irony is not lost on me that this guy who pretended to get stuck in the mud would later meet the same fate for real… and this time get fucked himself.

I realize I've probably sounded excessively flippant so far, but I really was struck by a sense of sadness at this news because 21 is way too young for anyone to die. But at least his Dad is right. We can take solace in knowing that Shain died peacefully doing what he loved… inhaling carbon monoxide.

Sneaky

Ted asked, "How close do you think I can get to that bird?" I figured he couldn't get close at all, so I was surprised when Ted was eventually able to actually sit down beside it on the rock without it flying away.

However, that's not the point of this story. You see, starting from 20 yards away, Ted kept inching closer to the bird without it noticing so he could take photos of it. The bird was oblivious, so he was pretty proud of his stealth photography skills.

But then things got funny when a strange old man came up behind Ted. He began taking photos of Ted taking pictures of the bird, and slowly crept up on both subjects as well. At one point, he was just a few feet behind Ted.

Later, we asked Ted what he thought of the old man behind him. He didn't know anything about the man and didn't seem to believe there was someone behind him until we showed him photos. Ted had no idea he was being photographed: he was so caught up in being sneaky, that he left himself vulnerable to being snuck up on himself. The hunter became the hunted!

Except that I'm obviously the top hunter here because I took photos of all three of them without their knowledge. What a weird cycle.

Sandy's His Name If You Please

I wonder if a whole song went into naming this hurricane Sandy?

I've never been part of naming a hurricane, but I have been part of naming a hurricane-focused essay. When Heather needed a title for her undergraduate thesis on the gender politics of Hurricane Katrina, I suggested, "Why Don't They Call It a Him-icane?" I don't know whether she went with that title, but let's assume she did, and let's also assume it's the sole reason she was given an honors distinction. You're welcome, Heather.

Watching all of the Hurricane Sandy footage on television, it's easy to forget that I'm not actually hiding inside from a hurricane. Then when I go outside it's like, "Oh, yeah, I'm in sunny Arizona."

I'm here visiting with a couple of people who have business jobs on the east coast, emphasis on the coast. They are NOT happy about how Hurricane Sandy is disrupting their jobs. "They better not close Wall Street, we have important trades that need to happen!" One wanted to make sure his office stayed open anyway, because no flooding would affect the employees on the thirty-somethingth floor anyway. Easy call for you to make on the behalf of other people when you're thousands of miles away from the problem.  It seems to me that - every once in a while - it may be useful to indicate to your employees that you value their safety over additional profits, even if it winds up just being a symbolic gesture.

Whether Hurricane Sandy winds up being as destructive as predicted is yet to be seen. But if the storm is over-hyped, it's at the hands of the corporate bankrolled politicians and corporate owned media. If Wall Street is upset at how it is being impeded for no reason, it only has itself to blame. Sometimes, it's okay for rich people to not make additional money. Sometimes.

Unless you're US Weekly, in which case, by all means, reference a tragedy flippantly, then carry on with business as usual.  

My Bike Keeps Stopping to Eat Hay

Pretty sure you don't need a college degree to work for the California State Parks Department.

Swift as an Arrow

Hey, teenagers.

Yeah, you.

I know I haven't had the opportunity to address your kind since I was a high school teacher years ago. I also know that you didn't listen to me then, either, but if you give me just 30 seconds, I promise to leave you alone for a good long while.

When you are "helping" at a community volunteer event, and you agree to do the easiest job of all because you don't want to actually work like the rest of us, the expectation is that you at least get that minimal job done right.

You've been tasked with holding arrow signs to direct the rest of us volunteers to the starting location, which is not visible from the main road. When I walk by and you're too busy gossiping with your friend to acknowledge me, I'm going to assume the direction you have the arrow pointed is the way I should go. Ten minutes later when I've realized I've gone in the opposite direction, I am bound to be frustrated when I return.

I don't know whether you thought pointing it the other way would be funny. I don't know whether you dropped the sign and were too stoned to notice your mistake. I don't know whether you're really just that stupid. But one things for certain: you could have more effectively been replaced with a nail and a telephone pole. And that's true of teenagers in most circumstances.

In total, your incompetence cost more man hours than you offered in the first place; I alone lost twenty minutes trying to reorient myself. Therefore, I hope they forbid you from putting this "community service" on your college apps. If you can't point an arrow in the correct direction, you're not cut out for higher learning anyway.

Sprayed by a Skunk

In an effort to be a healthier me, I try to go jogging a few nights per week. It's a struggle though, because every time I don't make myself jog, that's a night where, well, I don't have to jog! That always sounds appealing, so it's amazing the excuses I'll find for not going out to do it. But even my creative mind couldn't have made up the best excuse I found yet: skunk attacks.

I don't know why I didn't think of the skunk excuse previously, actually. I'm aware of a skunk living in my neighborhood as I've smelled it a few times. I even saw it cross the street once from the safety of my car - guess I should have run that fucker over when I had the chance.

While jogging last night, I saw what I thought was a cat a bit ahead scurrying away. Since it was trying to avoid me, I didn't change my course. As I passed it, I realized that it was a skunk, and out of the corner of my eye I saw its tail go up. I sprinted faster than ever to avoid a disaster, and although I could smell it, I felt pretty good that I managed to outrun its spray.

I continued jogging, but I also continued to smell the skunk. I figured the scent would dissipate the further I got away from the point of origin, but the stench lingered. That's when I had to acknowledge that the skunk got me.

Once at home, I threw out my clothing and bathed and scrubbed for what felt like an eternity. Today, I don't smell skunk on myself at all, but I'm still paranoid. Since I work from home and my roommate is vacationing, I have yet to have face-to-face human contact. It seems extremely possible that I still reek but can no longer tell. I'm actually afraid to rejoin society tonight. Oh, and this is not going to be one of those times when it's acceptable for you to be like "psst - Kevin still smells, but let's not tell him because it's funny." IF YOU'RE MY FRIEND AND I SMELL LIKE SKUNK, YOU NEED TO TELL ME, OKAY?

As for jogging - I don't know what I'm going to do about that. Clearly, Mother Nature wants me to be obese, so like, who am I to argue?

The Penguin and the Mechanic

When I was in junior high school, my clock radio alarm went off every day at 6:30, coinciding with local DJ Gary Craig's joke of the day. Though the jokes were sanitary enough for the radio, they were sometimes racy for a 7th grader, which inspired me to commit them all to memory.

I shared these jokes with only one person: Katie, the shy girl who sat next to me in Home Ec. Each morning, Katie would thread my sewing machine for me because I was too stupid (and manly!) to ever manage to do it myself. As a sign of my gratitude, I told her the daily joke. Being prudish, Katie would always beg me to stop telling the jokes, but I would finish them anyway, because my favorite mode of flirting at that age (and maybe sort of still?) was to try to prod a shy girl out of her shell.

Looking back, I'm pretty sure Katie genuinely didn't enjoy these jokes. It probably didn't help that half the time neither of us had the sexual knowledge to understand them. One joke in particular stuck with me because I couldn't fathom why the punch line would be funny. Today Gawker posted that very joke, which I will abbreviate as I remember it in my own words here:

When a penguin went for a road trip through the desert, he had to put his air conditioning at full blast to maintain the appropriate body temperature. However, mid-trip, his car broke down, leaving the penguin in quite a bind. Fortunately, a mechanic came to his rescue, promising to fix the penguin's car. He suggested that the penguin go into a freezer at the nearby grocery store to stay cold while his car was being fixed.

The penguin did just that, and while he waited, he helped himself to some frozen treats. An hour later, the mechanic found the problem and went to tell the penguin.

"Well, it looks like you blew a seal," the mechanic said.

Wiping his beak, the penguin explained, "No, that's just vanilla ice cream."

A few years later, I finally figured out why the penguin joke was funny, and it became my favorite dirty joke. I matured just enough to understand it, but then wasted this maturity by immaturely telling this joke to anyone who would listen. Haha - the penguin thought that the mechanic thought that...

As for Katie, despite my prior tormenting, she agreed to go to prom with me several years later. For the record, neither of us had vanilla ice cream.

LA River Cleanup

This morning I participated in the LA River Cleanup. I came home wet, dirty, sweaty, and bloody. In other words, it was fun. I was a pretty eager volunteer and put myself into precarious situations in, around, and over the river in order to retrieve litter. I consider this courage extra generous considering that I'm uninsured. I felt like Liz Lemon on this past week's 30 Rock stopping at nothing - or almost nothing - to get a bag out of a tree.

Volunteering did not just mean picking up trash - I also looked after the elderly. An older hippie man saw a plastic bag tangled high in a tree that I had already passed by because I couldn't reach it. I told him it would be difficult, but he said he was up for the challenge and began climbing this tree with thin branches. After watching him fall twice, I went over to spot him because I was concerned for his well-being. A few minutes later, an even older man came to "help" and started climbing up the tree that could barely support one of their weights and definitely not both, so now I was trying to give a boost and chaperone two old men in a tiny yet tall tree. It took half an hour to accomplish, but they got the bag. I think it would have been smarter to skip that considering how much other trash that needed attending to, but they failed to see the forest through the trees, or past the bag in the trees, as it were. Also, I don't think killing the tree in the process of retrieving a bag really constitutes saving the earth, but I was focused on saving the human lives in this case.

Most of the trash consisted of plastic bags. Somehow they'd wrap themselves around trees in a way that it would take legitimate effort to peel them off. There were a few other fun items I came across however:

* golf balls
* a doll torso
* a banner wishing CONGRATULATIONS
* sports apparel
* a large kitchen knife
* cute heart-shaped sunglasses, which I might have kept were they not right next to the large kitchen knife
* gloves - evidently people who had been cleaning in previous years didn't really get that leaving the gloves behind added to the problem

The grossest thing I found was actually a winter hat. I picked it up and reeked of poop. Since it was right next to a shopping cart, I suspect that a homeless person had been using it as toilet paper. Fortunately, I was wearing gloves.

The most dangerous thing I encountered is when the curled remains of a mattress box-spring that had been pulled from the river rolled back down the hill right at me as if it were a tumbleweed. I saw it with plenty of time to get out of the way, but had I not, I'd be missing an eye and dealing with nine kinds of tetanus.

I may look like a cutter with all the scratches up and down my arms, but you haven't killed me yet, LA River!

Get a Rise out of You

It's Easter - he has risen! Fortunately, you don't have to be a Christian to celebrate the occasion. Here are ten things other than Jesus that rise that are also worthy of your commemoration today.

10. The Sun

9. Helium

8. Sleepers

7. The Phoenix

6. Revolutionaries

5. Slopes

4. Paul Reiser

3. Bread

2. The Roof/Party-Goers

1. Courtroom defendants

Raise a glass to these ten awesome risers. And an extra shout-out to Jesus for leading by example.

Meeting the Amish

Though I already blogged about my friends and I drunkenly running around the Venice boardwalk dressed as homesteaders on the Oregon Trail, I left out one of the funniest anecdotes.

Our costumes were awesome collectively, but when we split into smaller groups, without the covered wagon visual cue, strangers mistook us for cowboys, Pilgrims, and Mormons.

When Clare, Allison, and Jonelle wandered away to find a bathroom, they ran into a couple of men working security on a golf cart. In an area dominated by bathing suits and designer t-shirts, the men were confused by the ladies' outfits. They asked whether the girls were Amish, and, deciding to have some fun, the girls said that they were.

"What is this, your rumspringa?" one man asked. Rumspringa is the rite of passage in which Amish young adults go experience mainstream life before deciding whether to commit to the religious lifestyle permanently. Either the guy knew that Amish people don't normally frequent Southern California beaches or noticed that the gals were intoxicated and must be taking a break from their strict rules.

Again, the ladies played along with the rumspringa idea, prompting Allison to pretend that she was unfamiliar with golf carts, so they happily showed her how it worked and let her sit on it, before asking to take pictures with the girls. Amish people aren't supposed to pose for photographs, but I guess all bets are off on phony rumspringas.

What's most hilarious to me is that these guys were smart enough to be familiar with something as obscure as rumspringa, yet dumb enough to believe that drunk girls, one of whom is black, wearing cardboard bonnets and touting an I-phone were actually Amish. Regardless, I'm sure they'll get just as much pleasure telling their friends about the day they met Amish chicks on the beach as I get from telling this story about them.

Urban Iditarod 2011: Oregon Trail

What happens when you and your friends dress up like frontiersmen and women and push a covered wagon down the Venice boardwalk? You end up having to literally flee from the cops. And that is a really sweaty and difficult thing to do when you are drunk and in full costume.

The event is the Urban Iditarod. It's a secret pub crawl in which a few hundred people form teams, "borrow" a shopping cart, dress in themed costumes, get inebriated, and make a spectacle of themselves in public. Since I'm good at all of those things, I participated in 2009 and 2010 as well.



My team chose Oregon Trail as our theme this year because it's nostalgic, cholera jokes are the best, and my friends are creative enough to make a rockin' covered wagon out of a shopping cart with just a sheet, some cardboard, and hula hoops. In addition to a lot of pioneers, we had a couple of Indians ("No offense" Ben's shirt read), an ox, and a buffalo. Even though there are no official "winners," the other teams were declaring us the winners because of how slick we looked when we reached the starting line.

Unfortunately the cops, who are wise to our ways after the years, were also waiting at the starting point and started issuing tickets before the event even began. I don't blame the police entirely. They'll give you some leeway when there's some plausible deniability; for example, our team consumes all of our beverages from soda and water bottles. However, when you are openly shotgunning Bud Lites next to the cops, they're going to ticket you, and if you give them guff for it, they're going to cuff you.

Rather than running between pubs like in the past, we ended up just fleeing from the police. We ran down random alleys and barely had a proper chance to catch our breaths. At one point we were trapped between a deep puddle and an oncoming police car and the other teams were shouting at us to quickly "calk the wagon and float it across." It was exhilarating in that sense, though I personally wasn't too worried about being arrested. Cuz let's get real here: more than racial profiling, cops douche profile. When they randomly start citing people, of course they're going to go choose the guy with an lewd statement scrawled on his wifebeater or the girl with her boobs spilling out of her outfit. If anyone were to ask, we were just a bunch of historical re-enactors who got mixed up with the wrong crowd.

Since other people had already quit, gotten lost, or in a few cases been apprehended, we no longer had the benefit of "safety in numbers." Once people started getting ticketed for stolen shopping carts, we dropped out of the race and made a beach day out of it. We stayed in costume and danced jigs to the bluegrass cover songs we brought and made a spectacle of ourselves all over again. In a way it was actually better once we were separated from the other teams, because we looked even nuttier to people out of context.

I love all of my fellow Oregon Trailers, and I'm glad to see that none of us fell prey to dysentery, snake bites, or even the police for that matter. Though we made it to the Pacific Ocean, we didn't quite make it to Oregon. Maybe we'll try again next year, but I'm going to need a year to think about it.

Cum Trees

Mother Nature has a dirty sense of humor. How do I know this? Look - or smell - no further than the Bradford Pear.

In college, we affectionately called Bradford Pears "cum trees." When they bloom in the spring, they emit the distinctive smell of semen. As if we didn't face enough of that odor in the dorms, it was always unpleasant to get a sudden whiff of that outside en route to class or the dining hall.

Since our arborist had a peculiar sense of humor (you learn these sort of things at a small college), I always figured that he planted the cum trees for kicks and that no one else would choose to plant these jizzy stink bombs.

My section of Los Angeles, however, is all about filling the air with ejaculate, apparently. The sidewalks of the main street are lined with Bradford Pears. From a visual perspective, I understand: when the trees bloom, they are beautiful to look at. But no flower is pretty enough to supersede the fact that the community now smells like a spent condom.

Hypodermic Needle

I volunteered on Saturday morning. Funny how an event billed as "tree planting" turned into "picking up litter on a highway median." The area's gotta be clean before you can plant trees, though, so I get it. The majority of the volunteers were kids, so with our bright safety vests and trash bags, we must have looked like the world's youngest chain gang to the cars whizzing by.

You'll find a lot of interesting things cleaning a highway median. Mainly there are beer/liquor bottles. I found an unopened tall can, but figured since it was the AM and there were children, I would just toss it. Better than beer, I also found a plastic folder containing the deed to a Rolls Royce. I threw it out, but maybe I should have tracked down the car and been like, "This is my car now, and I have the documents to prove it!" The headlines would read, "From Sanitation Volunteer to the Flyest Driver in LA." I'd have mad honeys in my car and we'd go for joyrides, but we wouldn't litter out our windows, because even though I'd have come a long way from cleaning others' trash, I wouldn't forget where I came from. You know, a modern day "Jenny from the Block."

However, the most disturbing thing that was discovered was a hypodermic needle. A little girl comes up and says, "Uh, I found a needle..." On the walk over to the syringe, I panicked. As a kid, it was firmly entrenched in me that if I were to see a needle, I was not to touch it, and to tell an adult. Clearly this girl had learned the same lesson, but now I was the adult. I may have gotten older, but no one ever told me what the adult is supposed to do in this situation!

I think we improvised a decent solution given the circumstances, but it wasn't following the letter of the law, which should have been adhered to considering the letters of this law spell A-I-D-S. And while AIDS isn't a goal of mine (it's not on my ten-year-plan anyway), I'd rather contract it through something fun like sex than wading through trash on a dirty freeway median, thankyouverymuch.

"Badminton Is a Water Sport"

I'm a fan of badminton. It's outdoors, it's "exercise" without actually being strenuous, the sound the birdie makes as it bounces off the racquet is enjoyably cartoonish, and the word "shuttlecock" is so funny that you should get a bonus point for saying it without giggling.

While I could play badminton all day/every day, sports broadcaster Mary Carillo sees the activity differently. As a former tennis pro, she might have some built up resentment toward badminton for being tennis' bastardized cousin. Check out this segment televised during the 2004 Olympics. Carillo begins innocently enough, but then after a minute, she falls into a psychotic diatribe about badminton. Her blood pressure must have risen off the charts; I don't think this relaxing backyard activity should be so stressful.

I first watched this clip with Jocelyn and Ben and we had to watch it again immediately. Since the two are actors, I suggested that they use her rant as a monologue for their next audition. They agreed that it would be a good idea considering it exhibits comedy, tragedy, as well as a wide emotional (if not mental) range.

"It's always Christopher Burr!"

Stains

While shopping, my mom mentions having recently bought pants for an elderly family member of ours. "We can only buy him dark pants now: blacks, grays, and browns. You know why that is, right?"

I freeze instead of responding. He's an old, extraordinarily flatulent man, so I get where she's going. But I'd rather not have a confirmation that he poops his pants. That's a piece of information I don't mind being left in the dark about.

As my mom begins to answer her own question, I brace myself to hear the worst. "It's because he's always working in the yard and gets dirt all over himself. When he wears light khaki pants, you can see all the dirt stains on them when he goes out later."

Oh. DIRT stains. Really glad I kept my mouth shut and didn't answer what I thought was a rhetorical question.

Chasing a Butterfly

At recess in second grade, I had to pee - though at that age I called it "tinkle" - but didn't want to go through the lengthy process of asking permission then walking all the way inside. My first instinct was to run to relieve myself in the woods, but the lady on recess duty was always diligent to shoo people away from there because, like in Grimms's fairy tales, forests meant trouble. Instead, I ran out to an open field, kept my back turned to the other kids, and watered the lawn like it were my job.

As I finished up, I noticed the recess supervisor walking in my direction. I began to act like I had been playing and running around by myself, but she was on to me. "Were you just going to the bathroom?" she asked me directly. "No," I told her. "I was chasing a butterfly."

She bought it. More likely, she just wasn't feeling up to following through on disciplining me, but at the time I thought I was some evil genius... a wizzing whiz kid, if you will.

I was reflecting on this time today and realized that one day I'm going to be detained on a public urination charge (my friends will tell you it's inevitable) and I'm going to instinctively reach for the same excuse. The I-Was-Chasing-a-Butterfly defense holds up in court, right?

A Soaring Employee

I'm having a difficult time understanding why I'm underemployed. I am a great employee: In just one day I singlehandedly prevented a PR gaffe, criminal charges, and ecoterrorism for the state of Connecticut.

When I interned for Hartford's Chamber of Commerce many years ago, one of my projects was to keep the other interns in the area happy. A lot of business students would work in the city for the summer, realize there was nothing to do, and vow never to come back. Our goal was to find ways to entertain them so that they would seek full time employment in Hartford after they graduated.

This assignment was particularly challenging because there is, in fact, nothing to do in Hartford. One activity we planned was a sporting event, except that Connecticut doesn't have any professional sports teams, so we sent them to a minor league baseball game. Contain your excitement, please.

My boss wanted to turn the event into a photo op in order to generate publicity, so she dreamed up a scheme in which we'd procure hundreds of helium balloons and have the interns simultaneously release them into the air from the stands as some sort of grand symbol of Hartford elevating to higher levels.

I was opposed to the idea. First, it was another example of misunderstanding what twenty-somethings consider fun (just buy them beer, they'd appreciate it more than a balloon). Second, it struck me as horribly irresponsible from an environmental standpoint. Why not just tie soda can rings to each balloon's string so that we could maximize the litter and animal fatalities?

Consequently, I lied to my boss that I was unable to find a party store that could supply that many balloons at such short notice. She put someone else on the task who successfully arranged it almost immediately. Frustrated, I tried to think of another way to thwart this eco-attack. Surely this sort of thing should be against the law.

And so I consulted state legislation. Much to my elation, there was a law preventing such a thing.

Connecticut General Statutes > Title 26 > Chapter 490 > § 26-25c - Release of lighter-than-air balloons restricted. Penalty
(a) No person, nonprofit organization, firm or corporation, including the state and its political subdivisions, shall knowingly release, organize the release of or intentionally cause to be released into the atmosphere within a twenty-four-hour period ten or more helium or other lighter-than-air gas balloons in the state.

Although I was sabotaging my boss' wishes, I came out the hero that day. After I shared the law with her, she was extremely thankful that I helped them avoid a snafu. She had already contacted the media, so the headlines would have read something like "Government employees break law, hurt environment." Not quite the press she was hoping for.

Okay, now someone tell me how to effectively reflect this experience on my resume.