Be a part of the book trailer

Ever been in a book trailer? Do you wanna be?

Email me a short (5-10 seconds) video clip of you checking the tag of your favorite item of clothing and I’ll put you in the trailer.

It should go something like this:

1. Look into the camera and say, “Check the tag”
2. You check the tag on your item of clothing say, “Made in _____”
3. End with “Where are you wearing?”

Or some version of that. Feel free to get creative.

My goal is to have the movie done by early next week, so try to get the clips to me before Tuesday. Email them to Kelsey@travelin-light.com….

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Insult yourself like no one is listening

This morning I caught a glimpse of the fella dancing in the mirror when an inspirational phrase popped into my head:

Dance like no one is watching.

The thought was followed by a somewhat less fuzzy one:

No one is watching because you can’t dance…and you’re ugly.

The man in the mirror laughed.

—–

When’s the last time you danced in the mirror? Were you any good?…

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Update: The Proud Father of a Vegetable Contest

Janelle “guessed” correctly. At 31 weeks the email update said that our little girl is the size of “four navel oranges.”

The fact that she guessed exactly this and that she works with Annie, makes me think that Janelle had some type of inside information. We’ll call her the contest winner, but I’m going to brand an asterisk on the front cover of the book I send her.

Given the controversial nature of her win, we’ll continue the contest for another week or two. If you’ve guessed already, your guess will stand for weeks 32 and 33.

Go here to see what others have guessed already.

Here’s the produce she has been compared to in the last few weeks:

33 weeks – ????
32 weeks – ????
31 weeks – four navel…

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Voted!

I voted against casinos and payday lending @ 380% interest.

I voted for the environment, fire trucks, and Change.

Me and karma should be pretty sweet for awhile….

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On Politics: I Dream of Johnny

Thank the lord the election is almost over. I care about who wins, but at this point in time I care more for the darn thing to end. My sanity is at stake.

The other night I had a dream starring both presidential candidates. It went something like this…

I’m standing in an entrance to a building with John McCain and others that I don’t know when I see two Volkswagen-sized disco balls float down the street. I run outside to take a look, but don’t see them anymore. I dismiss them as I’m apt to do with floating disco balls and return into the building.

Someone, perhaps a McCain aide, rushes in through the front door, breathless. He tries to shut the door behind him,…

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Where Am I Wearing? The book trailer

Because we live in a whacky age where every book should have a movie-like trailer, I tinkered around with a book trailer this weekend. Have any thoughts? Good or bad, I welcome criticism.

I really don’t get kicks out of putting shots of myself in boxers on YouTube, but once again I have. It’s just that I find my Jingle These underwear hilarious and I want to show them to everybody, which isn’t the kind of thing you can do in public.

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An Economy Great for An Economist

This is really getting my goat. (And nobody should be getting my goat. I prefer my goat remains right where I left him.)

Economists didn’t predict, or at least do something about, the craptastic fashion in which our economy is spiraling into the crapper. YET – and this is a big yet – they are all over our TV’s, magazines, newspapers, and radios talking about the economy, why we are where we are, and how best to get out of this.

While the current state of the economy – which most economists didn’t predict – stinks, business is moving along quite swimmingly for economists.

In conclusion: Bad economy for us = Good economy for economists

A conspiracy theory: Economists saw the global financial crises coming and, instead of speaking out about…

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Fruit of Whose Loom? Where our T-shirts come from

The U.S. imported 1.7 billion T-shirts in 2007, and only produced 244 million. The majority of which were produced by American Apparel. That’s right, 90% of our T-shirts are imported.

This month I contributed to Conde Nast Portfolio magazine. Mainly I gathered data for them to include a map with a feature story they were doing on American Apparel’s founder Dov Charney.

Check out the interactive version of the map of U.S. T-shirt imports.

I also wrote a small bit of text that accompanies the map in the magazine, out now. Basically I wrote a 300 word version of: We used to make shirts. Now we don’t. Here’s why….

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The Proud Father of a Vegetable

Lately, Annie is asleep when I go to bed. This gives me the opportunity to be alone with our daughter growing in her belly.

I put my arm around Annie’s belly and quickly receive a short, yet forceful, uppercut or roundhouse (who can tell?) from within.

Each night my daughter kicks me goodnight. I hope that this changes over the years. According to the email updates we receive, she’s only the size of head of cabbage, so it doesn’t hurt much…now. But as she develops into larger produce – a pumpkin and eventually walking talking, soccer-playing stalk of corn – I hope this tradition comes to an end.

But for now it’s my favorite part of the day.

–————————————————————————————

How about a little pea-sized contest in honor of our baby? The…

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A rant: Peeing Calvin

Calvin pees on earth

Allow me to go off.

Calvin of Calvin & Hobbes fame IS a rambunctious boy with an overactive imagination.

He IS NOT, nor has ever been depicted as, someone who urinates on things that rednecks don’t like.

Calvin never peed on a floating Chevy or Ford or John Deere or Case symbol, nor a floating (pick a Nascar number). The only thing I could imagine Calvin actually peeing on is a snowman, in an effort to slowly kill it. But everyone knows that rednecks like snowmen. If they didn’t they would surely have an adhesive on the back of their pickup truck of Calvin peeing on one.

So, if you want to piss me off put one of them there stickers on…

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