What does it mean to not consult wizards?

I’ve just learned that this steer-clear-of-wizards business is one of God’s 613 Mitzvot, or the commandments the big guy handed down to the Jews. These 613 laws are the backbone of a new people-powered project from Ben Brown called (RE)velation. The site lays out the Mitzvot—which are kind of fascinating once you dig into them—and then asks for your current interpretations, implementations, and understandings of these laws. Brown explains:

(RE)velation is an effort to more deeply understand God’s 613 Mitzvot—the commandments handed down to the Jews which touch almost every aspect of life. Some of these laws make sense in a modern context, while others have simply lost their meaning. What, after all, does it mean to not consult wizards? How relevant to us is the commandment to salt all sacrifices? We seek to remix, reimagine and reinterpret these laws for a modern audience in both serious and humorous ways, and to apply these Mitzvah more practically to every day life.

Some examples? “Don’t sit on my bed OR put your dirty feet on them,” is a remix of Mitzvah 610. “Don’t download music,” an update on Mitzvah 274. “If you’re going to dress in drag, buy your own damn clothes!” is this modern world’s of Mitzvah 365—and words to live by, brothers and sisters. Read more »

This week I’m the guest editor over at SK*RT, the online community dedicated to finding the best stories on the Web as determined by its members. Like Digg, the more community members click on stories, the more prominently the stories are displayed. SK*RT has a certain feminine mystique about it, but, largely, good stories are good stories; even denim-clad Levi’s guys like me find lots of great stuff on SK*RT. I’m honored to follow esteemed guest editors like Real Simple’s editor-in-chief Kristin von Ogtrop (who was once very kind to me when she was an editor at Vogue, and I was just getting my career going) and VC/start-up business legend Guy Kawasaki (whose 10/20/30 PowerPoint rule is Tim Barkow’s and my new copilot, and a man who we hope will be very kind to us one day soon).

Each day, SK*RT will link to one of my favorite stories. Today, I start SK*RTing with a great topic: love.

I never realized how much I loved delivery people, until I moved back to Phoenix in 2003 and the only two people who delivered anything to my door was the occasional Fed-Ex dude (I had to walk to another part of my apartment complex to pick up my mail) and the pizza guy. Can you believe it! There’s no delivery in PHX, no menus left on your doorstep for Tacos Frescos, nothing!

Anyway…

Not that either gig, Fed-Ex or pizza delivery person, is weird, but when I found this article about a pizza delivery chick named Tina Lance in the in The Christian Science Monitor, I had to share. Why? Well, while it may not be a totally out-of-left-field job, it’s still really neat: Like, seriously, how much do you actually know about your pizza person and what they do (besides the obvious)? Well, in Lance’s case, she likes to quote the likes of Jean-Paul Sartre and Emily Dickinson. That should satisfy the “weird” part of this blog.

The Monitor focused on Lance during a time when pizza deliveries skyrocket: The NCAA. The paper followed Lance, who’s an English major at California State University Northridge, on her route.

Here’s a blurb:

Even though the delivery culture can be difficult, she enjoys working at the pizzeria. It’s a family shop, literally and figuratively. It is managed by twin brothers Juan and Vidal Marquez. Three of their sons work there. Lance is one of the only nonrelatives, though they make her feel like part of the brotherhood.

Besides, she occasionally gets to use what she’s learning in lit class on the job. After one particularly bad night recently, she left her boss a note — “Hell is other people” — a quote from Sartre.

The next day, Mr. Lamonica called her over. “I didn’t know Sartre was in food service,” he said. She likes to recite Dickinson, too.

Though Lance isn’t a big basketball fan, she knows today will be a frenetic day at work — which means more tips.

By the end of her shift, though, the local team, UCLA, has been beaten badly. She recites a few lines from one of her mother’s favorite poems, “Casey at the Bat,” about there being no joy in Mudville.

You can read more about the NCAA, pizza, and Lance here.

The recent anniversary of the fifth year of the Iraq War is a good excuse to point out some of the war coverage we’ve done on SMITH. By “we” I by and large mean Michael Slenske, a young writer/reporter I worked with at Men’s Journal a few years ago. Through his combo of curiosity and tenacity, he’s has carved out an interesting “Iraq beat,” writing for SMITH, the L.A. Times, Men’s Journal, and elsewhere. In this space, he’s done more than a half-dozen interview with interesting Iraq vets—long, nuanced conversations about life during and after wartime from what we call the “chicken’s-eye view” of the war, that ground-up perspective of the soldier on the frontline rather than, say, that of a General or the Secretary of Defense. Slenske’s latest interview is with Tomas Young, the subject of a new documentary directed by Phil Donahue and Ellen Spiro, Body of War. Another exceptional war story Read more »

Body of Evidence

” Talking to my ex-wife about my erectile issues, having my mom stick the catheter in—those are all very intense things to watch. But the more people see about my daily life the more they know: 1) not to make impetuous decisions; 2) this war has personal consequences and ramifications that aren’t shown on the nightly news. “

On April 4, 2004, just his fifth day in Sadr City, Tomas Young got called outside the wire on a security detail. Though the Missouri native had been raring to hunt down Osama Bin Laden in his Afghan cave after joining the Army in a post-9/11 rush of patriotism, Young was strongly opposed to his deployment in Iraq. “Going to Canada wasn’t as in vogue amongst dissenting soldiers at that time, so I transferred into a job in the company clerk’s position from the infantry line platoon. I thought I was going to put myself in the safest position possible,” says Young. “It was a horrible plan.”

While riding in the back of a crowded, open-top water truck through a throng of armed Iraqi protesters, Young was hit with two rounds from an AK-47—the first severed his spine; the second shattered his left knee. “The silver lining there is that it wasn’t the other way around—at least this way I lost all feeling before I got shot in the knee,” he says. After being medevac’d to Kuwait, then Germany, Young eventually ended up at Walter Reed Hospital, where he requested and received a visit from Ralph Nader. The then-presidential hopeful brought along his friend Phil Donahue, who was so impressed with the young soldier that he visited him a few months later at his home in Liberty. There the ex-talk show host asked Young if he could make a documentary about him. “We spent [the next] three years working on it,” says Donahue, who alongside co-director Ellen Spiro, took cameras into every aspect of Young’s life—from his wedding to his first foray into the anti-war movement with Iraq Veterans Against the War (during his honeymoon at Cindy Sheehan’s Camp Casey rally in Crawford, Texas) to his younger brother’s emotional send-off for his own tour in Iraq. Read more »

Many SMITH readers know that online storytelling legend and friend o’ SMITH Derek Powazek has recently reignited Fray, bursting back with stories on getting Busted. Following the web-print mixed media model Derek trail-blazed with JPG Magazine, “Busted” stories are found both online and as a mag-a-book, with true tales from some of our favorite writers, such as Joe Loya and Kevin Smokler. Next up: geeking out. But it’s not what you think. Derek explains: “We’re taking the word ‘geek’ back. It’s not about computers and pocket protectors. It’s about passion—loving something too much. So much that people around you don’t understand.” We feel you, brother. He’s also looking for interviews with notable geeks (you know you know one). Go here for guidelines and deadlines for the latest from Fray, “Geek: Stories of People Taking Things Too Seriously.”

Happy Saint Patrick’s Day!

Well, in honor of Ireland’s patron saint (who was most likely born in Wales), I thought we should get to know the real St. Patrick—he is, after all, the reason most of New York City will be trashed by 3p.m.! Such a holy day!

I’ll keep this short and bulleted, since I know how hard it is to read when your vision is impaired!

According to Slate, which reprinted a 2000 article by David Plotz:

>Patrick was born in Britain, probably in Wales, around 385 A.D.

>His father was a Roman official.

>When Patrick was 16, seafaring raiders captured him, carried him to Ireland, and sold him into slavery.

>The Christian Patrick spent six lonely years herding sheep and, according to him, praying 100 times a day.

>In a dream, God told him to escape. He returned home, where he had another vision in which the Irish people begged him to return and minister to them: “We ask thee, boy, come and walk among us once more,” he recalls in the Confession.

>He studied for the priesthood in France, then made his way back to Ireland.

Oh and by the way, Patrick did not rid the Emerald Isle of snakes: Apparently, there were no snakes to begin with. Way to blow that story up.

When you’ve sobered up, you can read the entire Slate article here and even learn how he’s become a figure in the gay and lesbian community. Pretty cool stuff.

Happy St. Paddy’s Day!!!

I confess. I am probably more likely to toss out my crap vacuum cleaner and buy a new one before I lug the thing in my granny cart (pimped out rims to come, so don’t hate) to a vacuum repair dude. Well, it seems my attitude has contributed to the demise of the vacuum repair field—and that really stinks!

Obviously, I’m not alone in terms of my attitude: disposable, fast, don’t want to be bothered, want it NOW… because if I were alone John Huling wouldn’t be out of business. Thanks to jerks like me and those plastic, light-weight vacuums, Huling, after more than 50 years, is out of a job. See, back when vacuums first came out, they actually were investment pieces, which required maintenance checks and occasional repairs.

These days, that’s just not the case. Says Huling: “Plastics reduced costs for manufacturers but made the machines difficult to take apart. [They] work as well as the old ones and they’re cheaper. [But] they’re not as durable and you can’t repair them.”

Another sticking point for me about this story, not only because it’s a weird job, or was a weird job, is something Huling said about family—a concept that I’ve been pondering quite heavily in recent months….

From The Christian Science Monitor:

“I could name my hours … so when the kids were growing up, if one of my sons was in a play, I could break for a couple of hours and go over.”

Now, he says, with a rueful smile, “My kids are all more loaded than I am. But they also get up every morning at 6 o’clock and go to work, which I could never do.”

Here’s a guy who ran an honest business, came from three generations of vacuum repair dudes, and who’s departure is actually very upsetting to some members of his community… so my thought is, what’s happening to us? So many of us seem consumed with status, ego, and money and we’re losing site of the big picture: Family, values, honesty, taking the time to smell the flowers and enjoy life’s simple pleasures, like a friendship with the guy who fixes your vacuum.

Or maybe, I’m just feeling bad about ruining Mr. Huling. Either way, you can read the entire story here.

I complain a lot. Hey, I’m just being honest. In fact, I sent an e-mail yesterday to our fearless leader Larry Smith about why I wasn’t blogging. Something about my sink exploding, hot water gushing, hot water flooding part of my kitchen, yoga teacher training, yoga teacher training graduation day…. OK, you get my drift. And I do yoga, people!

I just read a great article in The Christian Science Monitor about a man who decided he was sick of everyone’s “wah-wahs” so he decided to do something about it. Not an easy thing to tackle I imagine, but as it turns out Rev. Will Bowen is having some success—he even got Oprah to jump on this bandwagon!

Bowen says the reason the world is the way it is and we are the way we are is because we moan too much; I think the Monitor used the words, “global grousing” to describe the problem. So, he challenged his congregation to give up complaining for 21 days. Read more »

Happy Hallmark Day everyone! Greetings from L.A, where the strike is over, no one takes the bus, and we had ourselves a fabulous little Six-Word soiree last night with our friends at True Media. They’re launching a sexy new site called True Hookup Confessions, where you can spend your V-day (or any other day) revealing dark secrets or reading other people’s. Tonight, Larry and I are hitting Mortified, another great personal twist on romantic humiliation. Got dumped? (yeah, me too) try Relationship Obituaries. Or right here behind SMITH’s own picket fence is The PopuList, our home for 100-word stories on just about anything. This week, what did you do for love? Us, we’ll do anything—for our love of sharing stories.