Dom Testa's Blog, page 8

Swap Places for Ten Bucks

The line at the post office snaked almost to the door. I couldn’t do the self-serve kiosk because I was using Media Mail, so I had to get to the counter. Looked to me like about a 20-minute wait.

I began to contemplate a tactical move. What if I went up to the second or third person in line and offered them $10 to swap places? Not let me cut in line, because that would piss off everyone who essentially got bumped back another spot. No, the person would walk back and take my spot and I’d move into their place, in exchange for an Alexander Hamilton.

They might take the deal. Or they might say no, whereupon the person behind them - or ahead of them - might say, “I’ll do that.”

Not everyone is in a hurry, and for some people ten bucks is a fair amount of cash.

I’ve proposed this idea before, and people say it would anger too many people. But why? If you’re no farther back in line, why would you care which humanoid shape is ahead of you?

It’s socially repugnant, I was told. It’s using money to get your way.

Yeah, I suppose it is. But so what? It soon won’t be my money anymore, and will belong to someone else. I’ve never heard of a more straight-forward transaction, a real-life example of “spreading the wealth around” that someone powerful once suggested.

So I’m wondering: What’s wrong with this?

For what it’s worth, I didn’t do it. I stood in line. And it was indeed about 20 minutes. Next time, I swear I’m busting out the wallet. Would you take the deal?

 

Photo courtesy of Thought Catalog on Unsplash

Do Audiobooks Count as Reading?

Is listening to an audiobook the same as reading a book?

I keep a list of the books I’ve read during each calendar year. It usually ends up being somewhere between 22 and 30 titles. Not a ton, but a fair number.

(I read mostly at night before bed, and it’s tough sometimes to keep from dozing off. That’s not a critique of the writing. I’m just tired after getting up at 3:45am.)

One of my co-workers heard about my list, and said her own list wouldn’t be very long because she mostly listens to audiobooks. I was puzzled. Why wouldn’t that count?

Oh, no, she said. Listening to a book is not the same as reading one.

Sides are definitely drawn on the issue, and some folks are adamant. They’re convinced listening ain’t reading. (Side note: I love an occasional perfect placement of that “a” word, so back off.)

Two things here, and the first is relatively simple: Why the hell do you care?

But, allowing for that care in order to accommodate the debate, what’s your criteria for something to officially be read? Must one actually see the words in order to properly digest them?

If you make that argument, then a blind person’s Braille books don’t count. And if you make that argument, then you’re an ass.

Now, for the record, I'm enough of a puritan to not count watching a movie. Sorry, watching the Dragon Tattoo series of motion pictures doesn't mean you've read the books.

I'm also not advocating that students start listening and stop reading. Acquire the skill in school, become proficient at it, and then (as an adult) choose what works best for you. Listening to an audiobook during a long commute, for example, is simply practical. But at least be able to read, and read well.

As for the original argument? I’m counting audiobooks as books read. How the words get into my brain shouldn’t matter, as long as they arrive.

Your turn.

Free Books to Combat The Summer Brain Drain

There may be no two words in the English language that bring more joy to a kid’s ears than Summer Break. Hey, I loved school, but I still salivated over the idea of weeks and weeks of sleeping in and goofing off.

But parents and teachers also talk about something known as the summer brain drain. The concern is that too much down time allows students to not only fritter away what they might have learned in the previous school year, but it also gets them out of learning mode.

I want to help by supplying free books. I’m going to take some of my own creations and give them away. You can grab copies of my Galahad series for young adults (middle school and high school) as well as some of my Buster Blank books for grades 4-6.

For the next two weeks on The Dom and Jeremy Show, listen for your chance to call in and win. I’ll also give away some copies through Facebook, so check in often.

All of these books are available online, too, if you’d like to grab some extras for your kids/nieces/nephews/friends/etc. Just go to DomTesta.com and click on Store to get the Buster Blank titles.

Amazon has the entire Galahad series, which are now in convenient omnibus editions. Just search “Dom Testa Galahad” on Amazon and they’ll all pop up.

I hope you and your kids have a great summer!

When Writing is No Longer a Hobby

You like to write, and you think it would be cool to be published. You just don’t want to try and then get discouraged.

I get it. I’ve been there. I sat on stories for years and years, then cursed myself later when I finally made the leap.

Eventually you realize you’ve got nothing to lose by trying. You may not publish a bestseller - in fact, you may sell fewer than 100 copies. But so what?

Ask anyone who has published a book, and I mean anyone: What was it like to see your name on a book cover for the first time?

You’re a freakin’ zombie if you say, Eh, no big deal.

Bullshit. It’s comparable to things like the birth of your first child, or hitting the winning basket at the buzzer, or falling head over heels with your true love.

Who the hell cares if it sells 100 copies or 100,000? You did it. You combined a bunch of words and packaged them into a book.

I may be qualified to help people learn to write, but what I prefer to do is help people simply get off their ass. After publishing 14 books, both fiction and non-fiction, I figured #15 needed to address the fear and doubts that incapacitate us.

The Color of Your Dreams won’t teach you how to craft a killer paragraph. Instead, it’ll help you make the decision to finally get your words out there. It’s a short volume, and the language won’t sit well with everyone. Certainly it’s not a book for kids.

But if you’re tough enough, then let me help you go for it. Grab a copy of The Color of Your Dreams and get to work.

Writing as a hobby is great fun; watching your words actually impact someone is euphoric.

It’s available in print and electronic versions, with the audiobook almost ready to go. Please, leave feedback and reviews, and if it does indeed help you, then please share the news with friends and family who also could use the nudge.

And thanks.

Missing Mom

What’s your favorite memory of your mom? It’s easy to pick out the mushy stuff, which is fine. But what about the quirky, odd memories? The ones that, in hindsight, remind you how much you take her for granted.

When I was in the third grade, our family lived in northern Italy. My dad was in the Air Force, and we were stationed near Lake Garda for a couple of years.

Our school was a small island of American military kids, clustered along a river running through Verona, Italy. Field trips are always fun, sure, but they really get interesting when you don’t speak the language.

One gorgeous fall day, with my mom as one of the parent volunteers, we all hopped on buses and headed out to the countryside. We were in search of fossils in a hilly, forested landscape. There were few houses anywhere in sight, just narrow dirt trails snaking through the trees.

Like most 8-year-olds, my friends and I shrieked and laughed as we scampered down the trails, until our large group was deep in the woods. It was at this point that I glanced around to see where my mom was.

And she wasn’t there. Anywhere in sight. In the middle of nowhere. I left my friends and started back up the trail. Which branched left and right, some of the trails disappearing into the mist.

I began to get concerned. I mean, where was she? The concern turned to worry. Five minutes later the worry bordered on panic.

Eventually I stumbled into a very small village. I remember some kind-hearted Italian women alarmed at seeing an American kid who was flustered and frightened. They tried asking me questions, but I couldn’t understand them and they couldn’t understand me.

So, naturally, my panicked eight-year-old brain reached this conclusion: I may never see my mom again. She’s gone.

Which is ridiculous, I know. And you’re reading this and saying, “Right, that’s not a big deal. Toughen up, kid.”

Okay, yeah, it’s embarrassing now. But it’s a little different when you’re a little kid in a completely alien landscape, unable to communicate. Rational thought evaporates.

I know for a fact I finally started crying as I rushed back out of the village. I’d never imagined a world without my mom. I mean, it’s MOM. She’s always there. What if she was lost in these woods for good, or she’d been kidnapped, or she’d fallen into a pit somewhere, or . . .

Ten minutes later, through my tear-flushed eyes, I saw my mom. She was coming slowly down one of the trails, along with another mom and one of the kids from our class.

The kid was on crutches and the two moms had lingered to help him hobble along. The rest of us had run off and left them behind. They’d taken one wrong turn in the dim, shadowed woods, then figured it out.

They weren’t really lost. They were just helping out and the going was slow. And I’d completely freaked out.

I never forgot that day. There’s no doubt I’d always taken my mom for granted, and, in all honesty, I’m sure I did again after that.

And then, a mere 13 years later, she was gone. My mom developed leukemia at age 52 and died when I was 21.

The reason I write these words today is because I’ve just seen another post from someone about how Mother’s Day is a silly Hallmark holiday. Or how it’s the same thing over and over, every year. Another person said, “Well, guess I gotta run to the store and get something for my mother. Ugh.”

I keep quiet, but in my mind I think about that fear of losing my mom when I was a kid, and compare that to the outright crushing despair of losing her for real. Sure, the “holiday” is a pain for some folks. Are you inconvenienced just a bit?

What I wouldn’t give to be inconvenienced this weekend.

Miss you, Mom. Hope the trail you’re on right now is splashed with sunshine.

Farewell, Albums

As a housewarming gift in December my son and daughter-in-law gave me a turntable. I’m talking the old-fashioned device used to spin vinyl. I quickly ran to my storage room and dug out a couple of dust-covered boxes holding more than a hundred albums. Soon my house was bathed in a sound I hadn’t heard in decades: the crackling, popping beauty of a needle on old forgotten records.

Not long ago we were all told to toss those albums because vinyl was dead, gone the way of 8-tracks, cassettes, and even CDs. And then, for who knows what reason, they began a quiet comeback. Not a massive comeback, mind you, but a trendy one.

Today they’re available in stores if you feel like plunking down serious coin.

But albums are dying, whether vinyl or digital, just in a different way. The concept of the album itself is in big trouble.

Sales numbers don’t lie. In all of 2017 there were only two albums that sold more than a million copies: Taylor Swift’s Reputation and Ed Sheeran’s Divide. And only Taylor’s sold two million.

To put that in perspective, ten years ago there were 29 albums that chalked up one million sales. Twenty-nine, compared to last year’s two. That’s a 93% drop in a decade.

To put an exclamation point on how things have changed, Taylor is one of the hottest acts by far and she sold two million copies. In 1999 Creed tallied almost 11 million for one album. Creed, for chrissakes.

We’ve become a nation of track downloads and Spotify. We like a song and see no reason to fork out the money for all the filler tracks. We love music as much as ever, if not more; we just can’t be bothered to listen to an entire album.

It’s no longer about hit albums. It’s about hit singles. Bite-sized morsels instead of full meals.

Sure, Adele sold 9 million copies of 25, and her previous album, 21, made the list of Top 50 Bestselling Albums of All Time. But then comes the reality check. Her entry is the only one of the Top 50 in the last 19 years. It’s Adele or no one, really.

Artists today often admit their only real source of big money is the tour. Where a concert ticket in the mid-90s cost about $25, today the average is more than three times that amount. We’ve stopped buying albums but continue to see shows. And at those shows what do we clamor for? The hit singles.

Perhaps you have your own theory regarding the decline in album sales, but I believe there are two primary reasons.

One, the ease of creating our own personal playlists is powerful. Using a cafeteria-styled system, we can cherry-pick the songs we love and group them together. It’s like the old greatest hits concept, only with a variety of artists rather than one.

And two, we just don’t have the patience anymore. Listening to the entire Dark Side of The Moon album was an experience for Baby Boomers. In the 80s you were a weirdo if you hadn’t bought MJ’s Thriller and devoured the whole thing, over and over again. Even up to the mid-90s we were interested in everything Rob Thomas had to say with Matchbox Twenty.

And that’s really where it ends. On that list of Top 50 albums, other than the Adele entry you won’t find anything after 1999. Nothing. We stopped spending the time to absorb it all and satisfied ourselves with little bits and pieces. Hey, it only costs a buck to get your favorite song instead of $10-$12 for that song and a host of filler tunes.

People love convenience and they love saving money. The concept of the album, although a beautiful thing, doesn’t satisfy either of those cravings. I may claim to mourn its demise - but an hour before writing this piece I instructed Alexa to play one particular song.

Guilty.

Is a Stand Aside Disrespectful?

First, let’s explain the concept of the Stand Aside.

Most people have a crazy crush on that one celebrity, either a musician, actor, or theoretical physicist. Hey, it happens.

Whenever you see them the lust-meter goes berserk. And you don’t keep this a secret, either. You’ll happily let everyone know just how much you want to ravage them.

On the radio show we call this person your Stand Aside. The idea is that if they ever showed up at your door, asking you to run off with them, your spouse/significant other would have to stand aside and let you fulfill your fantasy.

And that’s all it is, a silly fantasy, but one that many couples have fun with. My best friend chose Ryan Reynolds. Now, my friend is stunning and really quite a catch, but nobody is holding their breath that Ryan will dump Blake Lively and be ringing this particular doorbell in Denver.
Although in his past he did split from Scarlett Johansson. Hmm…

Anyway, a listener sent a message on social media asking us to stop referencing this whole Stand Aside thing because - and I’ll quote - “it’s so disrespectful to your spouse.”

Is it? If a woman says I’m the most important person in her life with the possible exception of Ryan Gosling (just to give both of the Beautiful Ryans equal time) should I feel hurt? Well, I don’t. I mean, I’d miss her and everything, but at least I’d understand. Ryan seems like a pretty cool guy to me, too. I’d love to have a beer with him and shoot the shit. But I can’t because he’s off canoodling with my now-ex-girlfriend.

Apparently some people have a different idea of fun, and it's not playing the Stand Aside mind-candy game with their babe. That’s fine. We know that people are different.

So here’s what I’ve decided. Your checklist for finding Perfect Life Partner should include “Do you have a sense of humor/fun that believes the Stand Aside game is funny?”

Because someone who thinks it’s hilarious needs to be with someone who agrees, and someone who thinks it’s disrespectful needs to find a similarly-puckered soul. *snicker*

Now if you’ll pardon me, I think Kate Beckinsale just knocked on my door.

It's New to Me: Eruction

Came across this word this morning and had to stifle the giggle emanating from my inner ten-year-old.

No, it has nothing to do with the blast you see on the right. Nor does it have anything to do with blood flow to the nether regions. But it is a bodily function.

An eruction is a belch. Yeah, when you burp you’re having an eruction. Don't feel bad if you didn't know this; when I typed it into Pages (the Mac program) it underlined it, which is Pages way of saying "That ain't a word." Yeah, it is.

It’s one of those words that’s fun to know, but a total mistake to write. Throw something like eruction into a story and you won’t impress anyone. You’ll come across as a total d-bag.

There’s a professional speaker I respect, and he certainly has made a killing in his field. Dude’s made millions. I subscribe to his newsletter because he shares a lot of cool insight into speaking and writing. But . . .

But the guy has a habit of sometimes dropping a word into a paragraph that you just know is there for one reason: to impress us with his vocabulary.

Don’t misunderstand: I love to learn new words - like eruction, to be sure - and I feel sorry for people who live in a limited-vocabulary world. But there’s a difference between spicing up your writing with colorful words and just showing off.

And we can usually tell which one you’re doing.

 

Photo by Marc Szeglat on Unsplash

Semi-Pro: The Gift of Giving Up "What-If"

I’m ambidextrous, which is kinda fun. I write with my right hand, I shoot pool with my left. I play tennis and racquetball with my right, bowl with my left. I eat right-handed, kick left-footed. Drum right-handed, but strum a guitar with my left.

As one good friend said: Dude, make up your mind. You’re a goddamned mess.

I played a lot of baseball as a kid, and as a left-handed pitcher I did pretty well. By age 15 I led the summer leagues in ERA. I couldn’t hit for shit, but I struck out a lot of guys from the mound. Yet by my junior year of high school I walked away from the game because I was already working full-time in radio. My trusty mitt was put on a shelf in the garage.

For several years I questioned my decision over and over again. I should’ve kept playing. I was a damned good pitcher. What if I’d played into college? Do you have any idea what a half-assed left-handed pitcher makes in the pros? You don’t even have to set the world on fire; just be left-handed and competent.

Those thoughts probably would’ve nagged at me forever. Until a call from a friend gave me the chance to test those thoughts.

This buddy, Dave, had a friend who played semi-pro baseball. These weren’t the professionals you saw on TV and baseball cards, but they were still good ball players. They kept full-time jobs, but took to the diamond every summer because they loved the game.

Dave’s phone call gave me a jolt of excitement. “Hey, Dom, how would you like to pitch batting practice for the semi-pro team next week?”

Are you kidding? A chance to dust off the mitt and fire strikes? Not just yes, but hell yes!

Throwing Heat

A week later I trotted out to one of the more well-kept baseball fields in town and met the manager of the semi-pro team. He looked me up and down, tossed me a ball, and pointed toward the pitchers mound.

Look, this wasn’t a tryout with the team. It was just one day where I participated in a practice session and lobbed pitches for the team to hit. I was still nervous. These guys were all in their early-to-mid-twenties (about my age), and in great shape.

But c’mon, it’s baseball. You throw the ball, they hit it, and someone else fields it. After ten or twelve warmup pitches, the first player stepped to the plate. A big guy, at least 6-4, 225 pounds. He looked so casual in the batters box, even joking with a few teammates standing nearby.

Side note: During batting practice, the pitcher has one job. Don’t get fancy, just throw the ball over the plate. It’s batting practice, not pitching practice. You don’t want shit in the dirt or high and outside. Throw it down the middle and let them get in their swings.

So I did. I threw several pitches that were promptly whacked, and I felt good. I still had it. I could still throw strikes. The next guy stepped in, I threw ten good pitches to him, then came the next guy. I could tell these players were appreciative of someone who knew how to put the ball right where they wanted it, to work on their swings without having to wait through a bunch of garbage.

And I started thinking. (We always start thinking, right?) Maybe I really do still have it. Maybe I could speed things up, you know, just a bit. What if I threw a few past these guys? Throw that ol’ fastball, the one that backs up on a right-handed hitter, almost like a screwball.

When the first guy stepped back into the box, I reared back and fired some heat. Real heat.

And he hit the shit out of it.

Well, that was obviously a fluke. I grabbed another ball, wound up, and zipped a blazing fastball just over the inside edge of the plate. Practically unhittable.

The dude hit it about 375 feet.

For the next ten minutes I tried throwing fastballs, a few curveballs, and whatever else I had in my arsenal. And these guys never broke a sweat as they crushed almost every pitch.

After another twenty or so pitches, the manager came out, thanked me profusely, and showed me where the cooler of Gatorade was. A couple of the players gave me high-fives for a job well done, then went out to shag fly balls.

I don’t think I’d ever been so dejected. I’d given everything I had, reaching down into some well of pitching prowess I’d nurtured for years as a young ballplayer, and I’d been hammered. And remember, these weren’t first-class professional baseball players. They weren’t even minor-league players. They were semi-pro. Not shabby, by any stretch, but not the cream of the crop. And I’d still been clobbered.

The Gift

I’ve thought about that day on the diamond many times in the years since. There are two things that stand out.

One, it was just fucking hilarious. I’d give anything to have video of the day, to see my face as I kept turning to watch the flight of a ball that screamed off the bat of an otherwise-bored twenty-something. I’m sure I looked miserable. Hey, I’m a good pitcher. I led the league in ERA and strikeouts. This can’t be happening!

But the second thought is powerful. So many of us carry What-If baggage throughout our lives. We wonder what might’ve been, how our world would’ve been different, the shitty whining reminiscent of I coulda been a contenda.

No, we probably never would’ve been a contender in that arena. That arena played a part in shaping who we were - my teenage baseball experiences were a blast, and I learned a lot about discipline, etc. But there’s no way, even with that early success, I would’ve excelled to the point that I would’ve made a living from it.

Meanwhile, my detour into radio played out quite nicely. My love of writing turned into more than a dozen books. The whole notion of what could’ve been would only have been an anchor on my dreams, causing me to second-guess things that should never have earned a second thought.

What a blessing for me to have sweaty, tobacco-chewing young men swat my fantasies out of the park before they had a chance to fester and mushroom into some soul-draining angst.

You have dreams, you have fantasies, and those can be good - to a point. But you also have talents. You have skills that not only make you happy, but provide you with a comfortable existence. Those talents could, if nurtured properly and enhanced through lifelong learning, explode into something way beyond those earlier dreams.

Holding on to coulda-beens and what-ifs is toxic. It not only hampers your progress, it keeps your head pointed in the wrong direction - backward, instead of forward. We only think we missed some grandiose opportunity because we aren’t given the gift of a reality check; we base our fantasies on faint, often piddly, evidence.

Striking out 16-year-olds ain’t the same as trying to strike out a damned good 23-year-old. I wasn’t good enough to be a semi-pro baseball player. But I’m more than good enough to be a full-blown professional in two other fields. I jettisoned my woulda/coulda/shoulda a long time ago. You should, too.

Oh, I still keep that mitt around. It’s a nice reminder to sit my ass down and write.

Let It Be Good

On a vacation a few years ago my girlfriend and I discovered a bar that truly kicked ass. It was on gently-sloped property behind a restaurant, a rectangular outdoor bar overlooking a small river. Towering shade trees provided respite from the sun. The drinks were moderately priced, the service impeccable.

For what it’s worth, the bar was ergonomically perfect, too. Just the right depth to the tabletop (not too skinny, not too wide), at a comfortable height, and with foot rests positioned just where they needed to be. You may, or may not, understand exactly how all of that matters. We happen to be "eat at the bar" people. It matters.

We spent more than two hours there, enjoying appetizers and cocktails, and getting to know some of the locals. When we left we said, This was so cool. Let’s come back tomorrow night.

We did. And it was utterly disappointing.

The food wasn’t as good, the new bartender was snobby, and the overall atmosphere was flat. We paid the tab and left after forty minutes. Walking back to the car, both of us quiet as we absorbed the let-down, I finally uttered the words that summed up the two extreme experiences: Why didn’t we just let it be good?

How many times do we take something that’s good and try to unnaturally force it to either replicate itself or to somehow be even better? We should just let it be good.

Recently I posted a photo on social media, a shot of my son’s T-shirt. It featured a computer floppy disk, a VHS tape, and a cassette, all holding hands. The caption read, Never Forget.

Okay, that’s just funny. It’s succinct, silly, and sentimental. I had to post it, to share the humor.

And then came the comments, including:

Why doesn’t it have a vinyl album?
What about an 8-track tape? I don’t see an 8-track.
Hey, why no CDs? Those are old-fashioned now too, you know.

Sigh. I wanted to respond to each of these: Let it be good. Just let it be good.

Not everything has to be one-upped. Or, like my visit to the pleasant outdoor bar, not everything has to be duplicated. Sometimes we should just enjoy every ounce of an experience, let it be the good experience it was meant to be, and then move on.

Yeah, our world allows comments today (on almost everything), but we seem to think it demands comments. Or refinements. Or flat-out improvements. It doesn’t.

We take too much of the good that we get and feel some ridiculous need to embellish it. But why? Sure, sometimes it’s good fun to keep a joke rolling, but I submit that it may often be better to just absorb it and all its goddamned goodness.

For creative people, this is something of a curse, because we tend to never be satisfied with our creations. Paintings, stories, craftwork, or any other artistic endeavor - we overlook something simple and good, and long to make it spectacular. But simple and good often is spectacular, really. Sometimes much more so because of the simplicity.

Are you able to patiently see the goodness? Can you learn to appreciate it?

There are only so many antiquated pieces of technology that could’ve made that T-shirt perfect, and the number was three. Any more and it’s cluttered and suffocated.

Our lives are like the shirt. On a daily basis we’re gifted good experiences, some big, some small. The next time you’re blessed, find the point of perfect satiation and walk away. Let it be good.