New Year's Resolution: No New Clothes in 2013

A few pairs of never-worn socks from my sock drawer.

I'm not good at shopping for clothes and shoes: I shop impulsively. I shop out of boredom. I shop carelessly. I shop from a place of insecurity, and I shop to soothe myself. I buy clothes and shoes because I think they will change my life—that this or that new item will make me cool (finally), make me irresistible to men, earn me love, or make me love myself. I have bought things simply because I didn't want a friendly sales clerk to feel like he had wasted his time with me.

Basically, I shop like I shopped when I was 14—the problem is that, as a 40-something adult, I can do a lot more financial damage now than I could with part-time job money, no credit, and no real financial responsibilities.

I buy too much, and I stockpile: This year, I bought a pair of shoes that I really liked. And that's fine, but then I bought a second (identical) pair just to have in case the company stops making them before I want to replace them. (Oh, and I already have dozens of pairs of shoes.) I recently cleaned out my drawers and counted over 100 pairs of dress socks, many of them never worn. I have at least six shirts with the tags still on them, and more than one of those is more than a year old.

Everything still fits in my closet—I haven't gotten into Hoarders territory yet—but I recognize a problem in the way I buy clothes. The real kicker is that I tend to wear the same handful of outfits over and over! So one of 2013's resolutions is to buy no new clothes or shoes—all year. I don't need anything, and I will save thousands of dollars. And it's going to be challenging! (I was coveting a shirt I saw in an ad during a Facebook break taken while I was writing this.)

My other resolutions are mostly of the fun sort:

• Cook more (even if it's just for myself—I have too many cheese-sandwich dinners). 
• Write more (starting with this kinda boring blog post about my socks). 
• Practice meditation until I can actually do it. 
• Master some interesting cocktail recipes (and have cocktail parties). 
• Grow a beard (just to see how it looks).
• Grow my business (Moxy Creative).
• Ride my new bike a lot. 

We'll check in next January to see how I did. 

Banished Words

Year-end lists of "banished words"—yes, they're fun to snark at, but they should be used for entertainment purposes only! Paul and I explain why in a new Moxy Blog post, "The Futility of 'Forbidden Words.'"

Now. All that said, here are some words and phrases that I would like to banish (a purely subjective list!):

• Off the reservation—This term is used to mean "off brand," or just "inappropriate" in corporate America. I hate it and am pretty sure it's in poor taste if not outright offensive. 
• Edgy—Used only by people who wouldn't know "edgy" if it shivved them in dive-bar bathroom.
• Manscaping—Just blech. 
• Fiscal cliff—The cliff metaphor is not apt. Call it what it is: a clusterf&%#.
• Huntie—If you don't watch Ru Paul's Drag Race and don't know anyone who does, you might not have been exposed to this term; it's sort of a disdainful way to say "Honey." Like a lot of drag argot, it was funny the first thousand times and then became awfully tiresome.
• Awesome—This is a personal challenge: Charles, stop saying "awesome" so much. Use your words! You are a 4[redacted]-year-old marketing professional with a massive vocabulary, not a teenage skateboarding prodigy. 
• It is what it is—Talk about an empty sentiment (in the category of YOLO and similar painfully obvious platitudes). If you don't have anything useful to add to a conversation, you can always just nod politely and make sympathetic noises. 
• Hipster—The definition has gotten too broad. I challenge speakers to use appropriate subcategories, like "skinny-jean lumberjack guy," "neck-tattoo pixie girl," and "bicycle militant."

The Agony of 'Les Misérables'

As for the new film version of Les Misérables, I wouldn't trust a reviewer unless he loved the musical (in all its sappy excess) as much as I do. So here's what I thought:

If you love the musical, you're going to at least like the movie. (You can stop reading my review now if you don't want any further spoilers.) The music and the story have been successfully transported to film. The major themes—redemption, forgiveness, and all that—are handled in an appropriately melodramatic and heavy-handed way. (This is a musical we're talking about.)

The scenes I liked best were ensemble scenes: "Lovely Ladies," "At the End of the Day," and "One Day More" stand out in my memory the day after viewing—these scenes seemed to best capture the energy and emotion of the good stage productions I've seen, while taking advantage of the medium of film and adding visual interest and depth. I also very much enjoyed seeing Sacha Baron Cohen and Helena Bonham Carter as the Thénardiers: they brought the comic relief (much needed in this very earnest show), and their scenes were just dark enough.

Poor Anne Hathaway's presence in the film has been incredibly polarizing. I sort of understand the animosity: she's just so ... perfect and lovely, and maybe she seems a little smug. Often, she's too obviously acting when I see her on screen. However, I want to now give Hathaway her due. She was pitch-perfect as Fantine, both as an actor and as a singer. Melodrama suits her, and she has a lovely voice. The other female leads also did a fine job. Samantha Barks as Éponine turned in a Tony-worthy performance if not an Oscar-worthy one—clearly a professional. Why weren't more casting choices made like this one?

That is to say, the film's primary problem was in the area of casting—specifically the male leads. Much has already been written about Russell Crowe's singing inability, so there's that. (His singing voice reminds me of a Muppet doing a musical impersonation of Marlon Brando in The Godfather.) But can we talk about the Hugh Jackman problem? He's so likeable and well liked that I'm almost afraid to say this, but ... he was not good in this movie. His singing voice was reedy and too weak to carry the role of Jean Valjean. It's almost like he was forced into the wrong key.

And Eddie Redmayne as Marius. Oy vey. Why?! He seems like a nice boy. But for one thing, his hairstyle (the same onscreen as off) annoys and confuses me. For another, his singing voice is not up to Les Mis. Just about every other student revolutionary in the film was a better singer. Why wasn't, say, Aaron Tveit, who played Enjolras, cast in the more important role? Tveit can sing!

Another missed opportunity was in the area of scale. I've named some ensemble scenes that took advantage of the medium of film, but not all of them did. A lot of the scenes—particularly the battle scenes on the streets of Paris—were far too sound-stage-y, and the lengthy closeups on singing actors got claustrophobic. Occasionally, I had too look away from the screen because I just couldn't look up Jackman's nose for one more second. (Keep in mind, I saw the film in XD.) I thought the film's beginning sequences—for instance, the prison scenes and the scenes of Valjean wandering the countryside after his parole—promised some filmic grandeur that later scenes failed to deliver.

I'm looking forward to seeing this movie again, on the small screen—to which it might be better suited. Oh yes, I will be buying the DVD. But I'll keep listening to my Broadway cast recording.

Classic Artichoke Dip for Your Next Party

You know how some people muck up their artichoke dip with spinach and stuff? No, that doesn't happen chez Purdy. Here's what you need to do:

Get:

• 1 can of artichoke hearts (14 ounces)
• 1 jar of marinated artichoke hearts (6 ounces)
• 3 chopped cloves of garlic
• 2 or three tablespoons of canned green peppers
• 1/2 cup of mayo*
• 1/2 cup of sour cream*
• 8 ounces of cream cheese (the block kind, at room temperature)*

*Listen, it's your life, but this is a party. Don't ruin everything with nonfat this or low-fat that.

• 1 cup of grated Parmesan cheese
• fresh ground pepper (a few good twists)
• a sprinkle of garlic salt

Drain the artichoke bits. Now get out your food processor and chop up all the vegetables (we're using the term loosely here, I know) until it's pretty much a puree. Then add everything else and mix it up. Put everything in a casserole dish and cook it uncovered for about 25 minutes (maybe a bit less, maybe a bit more) at 350 degrees ... the top should be light brown and bubbly.

I hope you really like your friends; otherwise, you won't want to share.

The Top 10 Ways to Write a Top 10 List

Whether you’re blogging for fun or profit (or mere fame), you likely know about the power of listicles to drive traffic and engagement. Listicles, listicles, listicles—at Moxy, we believe in them (and write them frequently), but we also sometimes laugh at their ubiquity. So with that, here are our top ten tips for writing your next “top ten.”

(Read the rest of "The Top 10 Ways to Write a Top 10 List" on the Moxy blog.)

The 5 Worst Ways of Giving Creative Feedback

Creative work environments run on feedback. Every day, leaders and team members alike are called on to evaluate and critique others’ work and ideas. But ask any type of artist- or writer-for-hire, and he or she will tell you that a lot of us aren’t very good at this important part of collaborating on creative work.

(Read the rest of "The 5 Worst Ways of Giving Creative Feedback" on the Moxy Blog.)

Shelter from the Brainstorm

In most creative environments, brainstorms just don’t work. That is, they usually don’t work as they’re intended to. But even if a team of creatives does manage to follow the “rules” of a brainstorm, this way of working often ends up quashing ingenuity and prohibiting productive collaboration. There are better ways to inspire creativity.

(Read the rest of "Shelter from the Brainstorm" on the Moxy Blog.)

Free Eliza Doolittle!

I had the pleasure of seeing the SF Playhouse production of My Fair Lady last night with friends. It's always fun to see live theater, and I do like the SF Playhouse—it's such a plucky little theater company. If the terms "live theater" and "plucky little theater company" sound good to you, then I think you'd enjoy this production. The music in My Fair Lady is, of course, wonderful—and it's very well done in this show. But the production lacks some polish. The costumes, especially, had a "kids, search your closets" sort of feel. Henry Higgins's black shoes were very distracting: his trouser cuffs kept exposing their giant bat-shaped buckles. Were these shoes a souvenir of the actor's gothy youth, we wondered? 

That's a minor quibble, to be sure. But what's interesting is that these shoes sort of pointed to, I think, a missed opportunity with this show—a modernization or a "look through the lens of our times" that this production weakly pointed to at times. But having one of the Cockneys breakdance for just a moment didn't take this idea far enough. 

I've seen the film version of My Fair Lady a couple of times. It's easy to get distracted by the camp of it all—and the songs, which are so captivating. But the Pygmalion story, as expressed through this musical, really speaks to our country's current conversation about poverty and class, I think. There's a chance I'm still reeling from some of the attack speeches at the Republican National Convention, but My Fair Lady (this production included) almost seems sort of Ayn Rand-ian at times. That's a low insult, so let me explain: For one thing, the show seems to look at poverty as a chosen state. Professor Higgins's viewpoint is something like this: "If the unwashed lower classes would just seek out education, their problems would be solved! But they're obviously happy in their muck." And the poor wretches, as portrayed in the show, support this notion. Their poverty looks like rather a lark. Drink, drink, drink, get some change thrown at you, and then dance a happy jig. It's adorable.

When Eliza presents herself to be Professor Higgins's prisoner and guinea pig, we're led to view it as an up-by-her-bootstraps act of will. "Look—she's improving herself. Anyone can do it." But what if this moment were staged more clearly as an act of desperation, which is what it looks like to me?

There's a lot to explore in this vein, I think. And it could be clearer that Eliza's pride and self-respect are something she holds on to in spite of Higgins's experimentation, not something she gains through it.

The biggest problem with My Fair Lady is the ending, which I guess one can't do much about. I mean, obviously, Eliza Doolittle is suffering from Stockholm Syndrome. How else can we explain her attraction to the the abusive, tyrannical Higgins? In George Bernard Shaw's Pygmalion, Eliza doesn't return to the professor at the end, as she does in the musical—in Pygmalion, she goes off to marry Freddy, who's kind of a nonentity in My Fair Lady. We get that Freddy is sort of a sap, but he loves Eliza madly (as she is), and he's nice to her. Something Henry Higgins never is. Compare the worshipful "On the Street Where You Live" with the begrudging (but still sweet, sure) "I've Grown Accustomed to Her Face."

Ugh! Now I hate that ending. It'd be a cute song in the mouth of someone just a bit more self-aware. Free Eliza! Free Eliza! Free Eliza!

This could be staged a lot more convincingly and poignantly. I mean, Freddy's primary shortcoming seems to be that he's not rich. How sad! And how apropos to our times. Because that seems to be the problem that many Republicans have with poor people: they simply don't earn enough money, those rogues. People like Ann Romney seem to think that being rich is easy—after all, she and Mitt started out eating pasta on an ironing board, so why can't everyone get from that level to hers? It's infuriating, the lack of empathy—and the lack of intelligence—on display, the inability to recognize one's own great good fortune (and recognize the difference between truly being poor and "slumming it"). I'm not jealous of rich people. I'm annoyed that they think being rich is something anyone can do if they just work hard. Why can't the English learn to speak? And why can't Americans just get off of welfare?

Maybe I need to lay off politics for a while. It's just ruining musicals for me. 

Hot Stuff

I have said many times that Donna Summer's Bad Girls album was the first album I bought with my own money -- but this might not be true. It feels true, and the timing is right, so it's likely true. I am pretty sure I remember buying the record on a Christmas-money spending spree. But the details of my childhood are so, so hazy. And no one was paying super-close attention to me in 1979 and 1980, so I don't know whether there's anyone who could verify this independently. Maybe my mother owned the record, and I just appropriated it ... although my buying the record seems likelier, given what I know about her musical tastes.

If it wasn't my first record, I don't want to know. It should've been my first record, and that's good enough. I like my version of history -- in which something in Donna Summer's music called out to me, spoke to me of the glittery disco balls and glamorous nightclubs and sans-souci fun that were waiting, waiting, waiting for me just beyond adolescence. Donna Summer was one of the voices of the gay generation just before mine. I felt the reverberations of her musical revolution -- I responded without knowing why. It would be years before I knew what "I Feel Love" was really all about (before I would feel love -- in the way that Summer meant -- for myself). But I knew it was my music.

As was the song "Bad Girls," which makes me think of my sisters. Not that they are bad girls (again, I think it was a while before I was hip to what "bad girls" were in this context). Rather I think we, or maybe just I when I was that age, aspired to be the candy-coated bad girls the song conjures: tough, playful, sexy, and streetwise. I can picture my sisters and me dancing around our living room to the song. This is likely a composite memory, and the song we were actually dancing to might've been "Hot Stuff," or it might've been the MTV video for "She Works Hard for the Money" -- or maybe we never danced to Donna Summer at all. But, again, I prefer my version of history.

All this is to say that Donna Summer's music was woven through my childhood. But by the time I got to nightclub-going age, disco had died twice. It was the late 1980s, and AIDS was killing everyone. Being gay had become a lot less sans-souci and a lot scarier. Then a nasty rumor (which had Summer saying something cruel and stupid about people with AIDS) greatly damaged Summer's standing in the gay community. She vehemently denied the rumor and worked very hard to repair her reputation among, and reaffirm her support for, gay people. I don't think anything was proved either way.

Who knows. But I believe and prefer Summer's version of history. You know how people love to tear down their idols. ... And even if the rumor were true, I'd be satisfied with her penance.

Anyway. These were the things in my mind today when Facebook -- our modern Greek chorus of celebrity death -- started singing Summer's eulogy to me this morning. What is a life? Well, there are plenty of half-remembered and misremembered moments, and then there are lies that become true, or true enough, through repetition. But there's also music, and disco rollerskating, and jubilant nightclubs, and moments of joy. ... That's what Summer's Facebook eulogy describes -- and who could ask for a better one? In millions of lives, Summer's music was the soundtrack to, or the very reason for, moments of joy: little kids posturing gleefully as "bad girls," hard-working women demanding to be treated right, and young gay men like me feeling love.



Thank you and farewell, Donna Summer. I hope you loved your life.

30 Million Jobs

Read about my appearance on Dylan Ratigan's MSNBC show, and watch a clip: "Choosing a Career Is a Lifelong Activity."

The Giant Value Seal Mural on Bartlett Street

Source: Uploaded by user via Charles on Pinterest

Go Ahead: Use Your iPhone at the Table

I haven't been writing a lot about etiquette in recent years, but I'm still occasionally asked to talk about manners matters of the day -- journalists working on etiquette-related articles find me online and ask for a few quotes.

It happened today: A journalist wanted to ask me about the use of mobile devices in restaurants (a common topic) -- and as is frequently the case, she expected me to deplore their use. She had pre-cast me as a prim manners maven with sensibilities firmly rooted in a pre-smartphone era: She wanted some quotes along these lines: "No phones at the table! Smartphones at the table are making us ruder and ruining civilization!"

The problem is, I just don't think that's true.

Disagreeing with Myself
I flipped back through my book to see what I'd had to say -- way back in the early 2000s -- about cell-phone use, and I found some quotes that would've have pleased this reporter. For instance:

"People who use their cell phones to carry on chitchatty conversations when dining look, to those around them, not only rude but also silly...."

Yes, I still agree with that one. Then there's:

"Keep cell phones ... off of the table during a meal."  

On this point, my attitude has evolved.

Here's the thing: Smartphones aren't, in and of themselves, rude. People behave rudely; machines are just tools. You can be just as rude at the dinner table with a facial expression or a gesture as you can with a mobile device.

I think it's naive to say that this or that new technology is "ruining civilization" -- keep in mind, people have been saying this with every new technology that's come along since the printing press. The tone of the absolutist anti-smartphone crowd sounds very similar to the tone of, say, the absolutist "anti-unescorted-ladies-in-saloons" crowd and the "anti-teaching-poor-people-to-read" crowd. Their cry is "It just isn't done!"

As someone interested in etiquette, I always ask, "Why isn't it done?" There's always manners friction at times of great change -- when old assumptions about the way things ought to be done bump into new technologies or social mores.

New technologies don't make us ruder. New technologies make us different 

What's So Rude About Texting, Anyway?
We understand that obtrusive noise is rude -- this includes loud cell-phone conversations in otherwise subdued environments, such as restaurants. I wrote my book way back when using a portable phone was likely to mean talking into it -- how quaint, right? But now we're using our smartphones primarily for silent activities -- so what's the problem?

Well, the other reason that using your smartphone at the table is rude is this: It's disrespectful of the people you're dining with -- it takes your attention away from your shared meal, and shared meals are highly symbolic (being that they are the very basis of human civilization).

So it's this display of disrespect that's the problem, not the device (you could be just as disrespectful by turning your chair a bit to one side).

But not everyone feels disrespected by others' using mobile devices -- and this group is growing. For instance, I frequently dine with a set of friends whom I also interact with on various social platforms, and with whom I share a large interconnected group of friends. With these friends, using my iPhone to quickly tweet my location isn't disrespectful -- because we're all familiar with the activity. At a business lunch, it's now quite normal for a group of acquainted colleagues to pause and check in with their BlackBerries. These things are happening; it's time to remove the absolutist ban.

When in doubt about the attitudes of your companions, it's always better to err on the side of caution -- but the complexity of the real world means that "Never do this" rules don't make sense. You have to pay attention to context. As is often the case with questions of proper behavior, the answer to "Is it rude to use your smartphone at the table?" has to be "It depends, dear. Use your common sense, and employ moderation."

Looking to the Future
Recently, a Los Angeles Times story discussed how restaurants are resisting, or adapting to, this change in the way we behave. It struck me that the restauranteurs who wanted to ban smart devices from their dining rooms were objecting primarily to the aesthetics of them -- their basic argument is that the people using them looked tacky. Fair enough. But "tacky" is subjective -- and yesterday's tacky (men without ties and jackets in nice restaurants) is tomorrow's normal. I was much more interested in reading how restaurants are adapting to the new normal.

In some ways, I am old-fashioned. I don't think a phone should be set down on the table, usually -- but there have to be exceptions. When I dine alone (as I often do when I'm traveling), I prop my iPad on the table to read -- call it tacky if you must.

Many More Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation

McSweeney's recently published "Seven Bar Jokes Involving Grammar and Punctuation"—and those jokes launched a joke exchange (on Facebook) between me and my brilliant sister Sarah. We came up with more grammar- and punctuation-related (and usage-related) jokes. I think ours are far better than McSweeney's, but you be the judge:

Sarah: An ellipsis walks into a bar ...

Sarah: The past perfect had walked into a bar.

Sarah: A priest, a rabbi, and a serial comma walked into a bar.

Charles: This guy who had a relative clause walked into a bar.

Sarah: A mysterious woman—overly fond of em dashes—walked into a bar.

Charles: A copy editor walked into a bar and sat down next to a preposition he wanted to end a sentence with.

Sarah: A bleary-eyed copy editor walked into a bar and refused to leave until properly hyphenated.

Charles: A subject walked into a bar and demanded a compound predicate!

Charles: How many writers does it take to stet a light bulb that has been changed?

Charles: A simile walked into a bar like a salmon swimming upstream to spawn.

Sarah: Into a bar walked one line of blank verse.

Sarah: A parallel construction walked into a bar, sat on a stool, and spat at a stranger.

Charles: A superfluous comma walked, into a bar.

Sarah: An unnecessarily capitalized Man walked into a bar.

Sarah: Now that's just pathetic; a semicolon walking into a bar as though he were a full-fledged colon.

Charles: Apostrophes are not welcome in the bar's around here.

Sarah: Your not kidding about that.

Now add your jokes in the Comments section!

On Emoticons

I resisted emoticons for years—all those cute little smiley graphics and punctuation-mark approximations seemed sort of ... immature. But the older I get, the less "maturity" seems to matter. And in recent years, emoticons have made their way into frequent rotation in my social correspondence. At work, I use them less often, but I expect they will continue to make inroads there, in time.

So I read with interest this story in The New York Times: "If You're Happy and You Know It, Must I Know Too?"

It's one of those "end of human intelligence" stories in which experts bemoan the fact that a new technology will spell doom for literacy (if not civilization itself). As Bill Lancaster, a lecturer in communications at Northeastern University in Boston, puts it in the story, "[Emoticons are] part of the degradation of writing skills—grammar, syntax, sentence structure, even penmanship—that come with digital technology."

I disagree with Lancaster on this point. Technology is changing language, yes. But language is always changing. It's supposed to. I imagine 15th-century Lancaster types bemoaning the fact that Gutenberg's newfangled printing press would spell the end of our ability to remember and recount long stories (and perhaps it did, but I think we're better off for the bargain).

Sure, emoticons can be a crutch. But as a shorthand, they're effective and suited to the medium of texting and email. Elsewhere in the Times story, emoticons are called "lazy," and we're invited to imagine The Great Gatsby's final sentence followed by a frowny face: "So we beat on, boats against the current, borne back ceaselessly into the past :-("

That's funny, but I don't think it's fair. Fitzgerald had access to illustrations but didn't use them—and isn't that what emoticons are? Just because a writer uses emoticons in his emails doesn't mean he's going to use them in everything he writes. I think most of us know the difference between a tiny picture of a cartoon tomato and the word tomato.

Looking at work emails that I've used smileys in, I feel that they've returned a dimension to interpersonal communication that we took for granted at the height of the telephone era: the helpful clues offered by facial expression and tone of voice. (The anti-emoticon language purists surely wouldn't insist that I speak in a monotone and avoid facial expressions when I'm communicating face to face.) A smile can buffer a request, soften a criticism, or indicate irony, whether it's personal or digital. Emoticons are rudimentary, sure, and many of us are still figuring out how frequently to use them—but I can look at them as a step forward for clarity in communication, not a step back.

Do Writers Need to Know Grammar Terminology?

They need to have a grasp of basic grammar, yes. But do they need to know terms—the names of verb tenses, the names of the parts of speech, and so on?

This question was recently posed by a blogger at PR Builder, and I'm quoted in the resulting post.

It's an interesting question, and I think the answer is usually yes. Writing by instinct may often lead to great writing, but instinct isn't always reliable. (In the PR Builder post, writing by instinct is compared to playing music by ear. I think this is an interesting analogy, but most musicians earn their skill through study and talent. The same goes for writers.)

Grammar is the logic (as variable and capricious as it may be) of written language, and understanding that logic means knowing its terms. The rules of even simple things like comma placement require that a writer be able to say to himself or herself, "This is a subordinate clause" or "This phrase is nonrestrictive." Knowing how language works (and being able to make smart choices based on that knowledge) is, I think, what makes a writer a writer.

You may decide to break grammar rules, but you will break them much more effectively if you do so knowingly and with purpose.

And here's another, more self-serving reason: A professional writer will often come up against editors and copy editors who want to alter the writer's work. Often, the copy editors and editors are professionals who are making the right choices and helping the writer say what he or she means to say. But sometimes (rarely!), those copy editors and editors are less helpful and will damage a writer's prose. Either way, it pays to speak the language of editing, so you can communicate with them if it comes to a grammar "smack down."

Secret Tips for Public Speaking

I've recently been doing a lot of public speaking at work; my role at Monster has developed into one where I represent the company not only to media and on speaker panels, but also in customer presentations (at which I discuss trends in recruiting and so on). At these presentations, it's just me, some slides, and between 50 and 100 people ready to listen to me for an hour or more.

Among my friends, I've been calling these presentations "The Charles Purdy Show." In August, the Charles Purdy show has run in Austin, Texas; Davenport, Iowa; and Santa Clara, California—next week, the show goes on the road again, and I'll be appearing in Lincoln, Nebraska.

There's lots of advice on public speaking out there on the Web, and I've read some of it. (Public speaking didn't come naturally to me—I'm actually very shy.) But I've come up with some "secrets" of my own in the past few months. I thought I'd share them.

1. Show up early and meet attendees. The more audience members I meet before the presentation, the better the presentation goes. I like to stand by the registration table or just walk around and introduce myself as the speaker. If you want people to ask questions or otherwise participate, telling them this, individually when you introduce yourself, is very helpful.

2. Find a friend. This is something standup comics do all the time, and I find that it really warms up an audience—comics often single out someone in the audience and talk to him or her directly throughout a performance.

Here's an example of how I do it: One of my presentations is on attracting and retaining Generation Y workers. At the start of the presentation, I ask people to raise their hands if they were born in 1989 or 1990 (and I widen the range until at least one person has raised a hand). When I have one or two people, I ask their names and nominate them as "Gen Y representatives." Throughout the rest of the presentation, I either reference them or ask them direct questions. (For instance, after I find a Gen Y-er named Lauren, when I then mention a negative stereotype of this generation, I say "No offense, Lauren." And when I show a slide that talks about Gen Y's values, I ask, "Would you agree with this, Lauren?") Don't overdo it—but connecting with one audience member can help you connect to the whole audience.

3. Flub your lines. Just once or twice, near the beginning of your presentation but after you feel you've established yourself as an authority, make a minor mistake—something you can laugh about. I swear this works! People don't like presenters that are too polished and perfect, and bouncing back from a flub shows that you are not just a "presenting automaton" but rather are in the moment and responsive to your environment. (And being in the moment is key to great presenting!)

You may not be able to make misspeaking seem genuine (and if you feel you can't, then don't try it), but what about, say, "accidentally" repeating a slide and making a self-deprecating joke? I did this for real once—and discovered that it works.

(Along these lines, you should never be reading during a presentation if you can avoid it. Use an outline for notes, but reading makes eye contact impossible.)

4. Give people your contact information first. I always begin presentations with my email address—and tell people that I will send them a copy of the slides (if I can) and that I'll answer questions. This releases people from the bondage of note-taking and also lets me represent myself in a friendly way.

5. Don't picture the audience in their underwear. I don't know how this became a touchstone of public-speaking advice—I think it's terrible. I, instead, concentrate on why they came to hear me speak. I think of how my presentation will help them in their jobs. And I picture them happy (and fully dressed). I consciously repeat to myself, "I like these people"—I find that this makes me smile more and remain more open-minded.

Image: Idea go / FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Review of "Tales of the City: A New Musical"

As much as it pains me to say so, the new musical version of Tales of the City is not as wonderful as it might be. I say this with love and a desire to help—the show is currently in previews; one assumes they’re still tinkering.

Like everyone I know, I adore the books—not only as gems of popular American literature, but also on a deeply personal level: the books are about my city and my friends. They are about me.

I also adore musicals. So I expected this to be a giddily delightful theater-going experience.

There were a few moments that approached this: When the show is funny, it is at its best. Dissatisfied society wife DeDe Halcyon-Day has, I think, two of the best songs (her musical seduction of a Chinese-food delivery guy was one of the highlights of the first act). Among the dramatic numbers, Michael Tolliver’s musical delivery of the coming-out letter he wrote for his mother was moving. (All credit for that lyric is of course due Armistead Maupin.)

All the major players in the show did well in their parts. But here’s the thing, maybe: At their heart, the Tales books (at least the first couple of them) are very, very, very sweet. The good people at 28 Barbary Lane are very good. Even the messed-up, confused ones have hearts of pure gold. (Bad people are punished. Love conquers all. Society’s misfits prevail. We are all cosmically connected. And so on.) Then, the traditional musical relies on this sort of simple sweetness and morality. So the sweetness of the tale and the sweetness of the format combine to make this musical cloying. I wondered whether the writers could have cut some of the treacle by pumping up the raunchiness factor. The show’s “raunchiness” has a cartoonish quality (as do the books’—but putting cartoonish raunchiness to song amplifies that quality in a cringe-y way). I wished for a bit of grit. Mona’s drug use is too adorable. Michael’s romantic heartbreak is too wistful. (Or maybe I’m just too cynical and awful.) The scene with the jockey-shorts contest was entirely too PG. I’m thinking of the film version of the musical Cabaret when I think of cartoonish raunchiness that had a good gritty quality.

And that’s enough of the word raunchy, I think.

The adaptation of the book was quite literal, mood-wise (some plot elements were shifted a teensy bit). We have the benefit, now, of hindsight—of knowing what comes after the freewheeling 1970s; I don’t think it would have been out of place to drop a little bit of foreshadowing into this version of the story.

I was most surprised by how forgettable the music was. The talent involved in creating the music is formidable: Jake Shears and John Garden of the group Scissor Sisters are credited. But I wondered whether they felt oppressed by this unfamiliar genre. All the songs were generically “musical-esque”—and the show was heavy on ballads. I wanted a few catchier tunes. This show didn't feel like a musical journey to the 1970s—I (and all the other old queens in the audience) should have felt like getting up and dancing! I didn't. I wanted Mrs. Madrigal to have an "I Am What I Am" moment instead of quite so much maternal concern. The songs in this musical should be headed right for remixes and modern discos. … They should end up at The Endup. I don't see that happening.

Adapting such a well-loved book series must have been daunting. Fitting the complex story into three hours must’ve been very difficult (the plot might perhaps be simplified). I hope the show gets a little bit of retooling, because I want to love it and I think I could!

Here a Blog, There a Blog, Everywhere a Blog-Blog

I'm blogging (occasionally) about LGBT stuff again, on Queerty. This week's post is about whether we should boycott mixed-sex weddings. And, you know, I continue to blog it up over at Monster.com!

Illogical Punctuation

Slate columnist Ben Yagoda recently wrote about a standard punctuation rule in American English: the placement of commas and periods inside quotation marks when those quotation marks enclose a title or some kinds of quoted material.

For example, we would write:

I love the song "Bad Romance," don't you?

Not:

I love the song "Bad Romance", don't you?

There are a few reasons for this preference. A primary one is that, long ago, American typesetters agreed that text looked better this way (putting below-the-baseline punctuation marks inside quotation marks prevents unsightly gaps in blocks of text). Another reason is mere tradition. This is just the way we do it.

In his well-reasoned post, Yagoda argues that this rule is illogical; he would rather that our periods and commas not intrude on titles like this. And his argument makes sense.

He also argues that a lot of people are already ignoring the rule when writing online. In the continuing language debate between prescriptivism and descriptivism, Yagoda is on, in this case, the side of descriptivism: that is, the "right" way to write is the way that enough people are doing it. (The definition of the word enough is a whole 'nother conversation; I'm not sure if enough people use its and it's interchangeably for a descriptivist argument that we should do away with the distinction, but I hope not.)

But "everyone else is doing it" is not a persuasive argument, and I know your momma taught you that. In the end, we, sadly, can't always let logic dictate how we write. By extension of the logic argument, we would spell words phonetically—English spelling is notoriously illogical and dependent on tradition, and this causes all sorts of problems and misunderstandings.

Here's the best reason to use standard punctuation as it's outlined by the major style guides, such as our dear Chicago: Punctuation shouldn't call attention to itself—it shouldn't get in the way of what a writer is trying to say. If a reader notices your punctuation, you're probably doing it wrong. If you often have to explain to people that the way you're punctuating something is not, in fact, an error, your punctuation isn't working for you.

I'd guess that the typical general-interest online reader doesn't know (or doesn't care about) where commas go in relation to a closing quotation mark. Seeing a comma in either place won't bother her. But people who know the rule will be momentarily jolted out of their reading every time they come across a period in the "wrong" place. Like them, I'll be happily reading along and suddenly interrupted by the thought "Typo?" flitting across my consciousness.

The purpose of grammar rules isn't to allow the people who know them to feel superior. (Most people get by just fine without knowing them.) Their purpose is to help writers express themselves clearly by using mutually understood guidelines.

Having standards (even arbitrary ones, like some punctuation rules and the spelling of a great many English words) allows writers and editors to concentrate on getting meanings across, without having to waste time wondering and debating about where the comma goes. The answer is right there, in Chicago. We don't have to worry about it.

Shut Up

Sixteen hours? Sixteen hours of being subjected to someone else's nonstop high-volume cell-phone conversation? I'm amazed it took that long for someone to tell the yakker to shut up.

Of course, I wouldn't recommend those words. But I have some thoughts about the story of Lakeysha Beard, the Amtrak passenger whom police recently removed from a train's "quiet car" after she reportedly talked on her cell phone for 16 hours. ... Again: 16 hours! Who has that much to talk about?

And why didn't Amtrak staff intervene? Why was it left to the passengers? When I used to write a manners-advice column, I was often asked what to do about someone who was breaking the laws or rules of a public space and thereby annoying other people. My response was generally along the lines of this: "If you can, find an authority figure—someone in a uniform of some sort. Bullies (and that's who these people usually are) are cowards, and cowards are cowed by authority figures."

Plus, taking care of these sorts of problems is in authority figures' job descriptions.

Failing that, you can try speaking to someone like this as if she were simply unaware of the problem and would surely be happy to correct it. But as we see in Beard's case, approaching people who are clearly flouting well-understood rules is a losing proposition. (Beard got violent—of course she did!) Such a person is not only a bully but also (at least slightly or perhaps temporarily) a sociopath: She knows the rules but breaks them anyway. She knows she's bothering or endangering other people, and she knows that this makes her frightening. She is probably not a person you can have a productive conversation with.

I probably would've been one of the passengers who sat silently fuming for 16 hours. There's just something so teeth-grindingly, eye-rollingly annoying about being subjected to these one-sided cell-phone conversations. It's visceral. And I think that's because of the aforementioned sociopathy, or narcissism, of the speakers. It's not simply that they don't care about annoying other people. It usually seems to me that they're enjoying their stolen spotlight. They think their conversations are impressive, that we're somehow wowed by the glimpse we're getting into their lives.

Ugh.

With notable and infrequent exceptions, other people's private conversations are beyond banal. I try to remember that when my phone rings while I'm on Muni. And I always travel with ear plugs.

In related news: Lakeysha Beard's blathering killed an unknown number of bees.


Image: Christian Meyn / FreeDigitalPhotos.net