Mark Hayward Is My Hero

I was in Washington DC this week to hang out with my Dad’s side of the family, and I saw a man with the longest legs in the world. Ok, I don’t know if they really were THE longest, but they were seriously long. Crazy long. My wife is 5’9″ and the dude’s legs were at least up to her shoulders. He was not the tallest man I have ever seen, but he CERTAINLY had the longest legs I have ever seen. The thing was that his body was about the proportions of a regular-size guy, it was just his amazingly long legs that made him so tall. It took a lot of effort to not stare, and the guy next to me didn’t even try, he just gaped.

Here’s what went through my mind, in order, when I saw Mr. Long Legs:

1. Wow, that’s a really tall guy
2. Wow, his legs are really long
3. REALLY long
4. Huh… his pants are too short….
5. Yeah, well… what’re ya gonna do?  There’s no way anyone makes pants that long.

This weekend I went to Chicago even though I didn’t have any gigs. I just went up to hang out with my pals. It was the first time I’ve done that in YEARS, and it was really fun.

As luck would have it, the Threadless Christmas party was Friday night and my friend Harper invited me to come. Since I am often in Chicago in the middle of the day with some time to kill before or after gigs, I have spent a fair amount of time hanging out at Threadless. Mostly I hang out with Harper, but I know a few of the other folks there a little, so going to the Christmas party wasn’t the awkward I-don’t-know-anybody experience that usually happens when you go to someone else’s work party. The other thing that made it good was that Threadless really knows how to let it all hang out. Where most work places have one or two wild and crazy characters, at Threadless it’s the opposite, almost everyone is wild and crazy. There is never any shortage of wacky stuff going on with those cats.

Harper and Crystal

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Smoothies are SO yummy. It’s not always easy to find a place that will make you a good one. The whole smoothie industry seems like a bit of a racket to me anyway. The total cost on the ingredients is very low, but the smoothie still costs three or four bucks. The solution? Make your own!

My buddy Adolfo is a smoothie master. He has one almost every day, and he gave me his recipe:

Throw in a peeled mango or a banana

About 1/3 cup OJ

About 1/3 cup Soy milk

2 or 3 ice cubes

Throw in blueberries, strawberries, or whatever

I like to put in some flax meal, maybe a tablespoon or two

Now, blend the heck out of it. Should be yummy.mmmm.

A very good recipe. Now here’s my version of it:

• One peeled banana
• One peeled, seedless tangerine or orange
• A handful of frozen blueberries and/or cherries or mango chunks
• 2 or 3 spoonfuls of vanilla yogurt
• 1/3 cup of whatever juice I have already made in the fridge
• sometimes 1/3 cup of milk
• I think I’m going to add in the flax meal since it’s so good for you, but I just haven’t bought any yet

I am amazed at how delicious it is. AND you get a whole bunch of servings of fruit (a real problem for most Americans) in a very quick and easy form. Works much better in a blender than a food processor by the way. Sometimes it’s hard for me to resist the urge to put other weird stuff in there. I figure that it’s all going to get blended up anyway, so what’s wrong with throwing a few Skittles, a Snickers bar, or some Doritos in too?

Yo-yo contests are awesome. First of all, I get to hang out with a bunch of yo-yo folks (mostly dudes, but hopefully that will change), and second I get to see TONS of awesome yo-yo tricks.

Indiana States was really fun this last Saturday. Much to my surprise a lot of the WAY out of town people came. We had people from Iowa, Minnesota, Illinois, and even New York. I counted about 75 people before things really got rolling, so I think there were about 100 there at the peak of the action. That was twice as many as I expected.

For the most part the contest went smoothly. We got the freestlye routines (3 minutes of tricks set to music) going a little late and we had a LOT of them so of course things went long. 20 is a lot for one conetest, and we had 48 to get through. It was really too many, but it’s hard to cut people when the main goal is to encourage yo-yoing.

You can see the final contest results here, and you can learn yo-yo tricks here.

I’ve said it before, but it still amazes me how cool I continue to think yo-yos are. Seriously… yo-yos are awesome.

I just sent an email to NBC. I don’t do it very often, but I enjoy sending letters to large companies when I have something to contribute. Partly I do it because I have an idea, suggestion, or complaint, but I also do it just to see what will happen. Most of the time I get a real response from an actual person, but I don’t think this will be one of those times. Here is the letter I just sent through NBC’s Contact Us Form:

I saw some of the cast of Heroes on Ellen this morning and Masi Oka lamented that he didn’t have a new witty answer to the question: “If you could choose a real-life super-power what would it be?” It seems to me that if he had a list of good answers he could just pick the next one on the list for each new interview he had. I made up a list for him in case he wants to use it: (more…)