Up against the wall! You’re suspected of being one of the few people who cares about what’s going on on this site!
Actually, that’s not what I meant by “Freeze!” The freeze I’m talking about is the brief intentional hiatus I’m taking from posting. (As opposed to almost all the other, less on-purpose, hiati.) Which strictly speaking isn’t really a hiatus, because I’ll be posting behind the scenes over at Lance Magazine, the intensely narcissistic project I mentioned a few posts ago. I’m really pressing to wrap that up for launch, and posting over here is counter-productive to that process, logistics-wise. This is the old way, and as the elders foretold, we must eventually leave behind the old ways. Screw you, old ways! (No offense.)
Lance Magazine is going to be, as the slogan says, “So much Lance you’ll puke with joy.” A multimedia dazzle-scape of cornucopious proliferation of spectacularity and resounding communicational explorosions that will insenserate you to magnificent occasional chuckles and mild amusement and there will be photos and for some reason my old poems and some other shit.
Good times.
Note: In case you’re wondering, no, I don’t understand either why the elders would have foretold such a thing. It totally goes against their own interests, don’t you think? But now that I’m examining the logic, the fact that they would be so self-destructive as to foretell the leaving behind of their very own ways–pretty much setting in motion a classic self-fulfilling prophecy–then their ways are probably best left behind. But wait–doesn’t that make them immensely wise? In which case, we wouldn’t want to lose their ways. And then there’s the teenage rebellion factor–ohhh, yeah! The elders are playing the old reverse psychology game! They foretell the leaving behind, and the youth are like, “Screw you, we’re not gonna leave the old ways behind! Or take out the garbage! Go suck a lemon, Pops!”
A brilliant ploy, elders! And a nice try. But you’ve got to get up pret-ty early in the morning to get one past ol’ Lance With Ants In His Pants.
Because I never sleep. And I have hidden cameras surveilling your every move. A silent majority of your social circle is on my payroll as paid informants. So if you make one wrong move…if you so much as look at me the wrong way…
Man, that got dark, eh? Don’t worry, elders. We’re totally cool. We’ll do some old ways, some new ways…it’s all good.
Little known fact: tumbleweeds* are covered in these vicious little thorny things, which fall off and get stuck in shoes and feet, to painful effect.
*Update: A friend clarified that while tumbleweeds do have thorny growths, they aren’t the source of goat heads. That source is a ground-creeping plant called (among other nicknames) “Goat head”. I had been misinformed by a neighbor when I first moved to this area that the two were in fact the same plant. Apologies to all the tumbleweeds I unintentionally libeled.
The bane of my dog’s (feet’s) existence
People call them “goat heads” due to their appearance.
I have been posting here less than I’d like to be, and there are a number of reasons why. Some (most?) involve personal turmoil, family crises, and other time-and-attention-demanding stuff. (Much of which will probably come to light via future episodes of my podcast Estranged.)
But there’s also a practical reason why I haven’t been posting here much, and that is because I’m working on replacing this site entirely–with two other sites.
This blog/site has always been muddled, “brand”-wise. Never quite a professional site focused on website stuff and social media and the rest of the things I do for money, and pretty half-assed as a personal site where I share pics and videos and stories and projects and other tidbits that make up my life, and that make me me. I’ve taken stabs at trying to make it more of both of those things, but ultimately, this has just been a place where I post stuff sometimes.
For someone who preaches to my clients (and anyone else who will listen) about the power of the “social web”, and the need for anyone with a web presence to proactively engage in the global conversation about whatever it is they care about and know about, the casual (a.k.a. half-ass) approach I’ve taken here, in a word, sucks. This isn’t a great place to go for wisdom about maximizing your impact on the social web–even though I’ve got bucketloads of wisdom to share–and it’s not a particularly great resource to just learn about (and fall deeply in stranger-love with) the beautiful mystery that is Lance Marshall Brown, man of renown. (Or, if you prefer, Lance Who has Ants in his Pants.)
The solution? As my mom said to me for many years before pretty much giving up: “Focus.” And what better way to focus than to create two sites to work on instead of one? Hmm…that doesn’t sound like it adds up, but it does, I swear.
Focus: on Freelance Lance, WordPress Wizard and Internet Sherpa. Fountain of wisdom on many things Internet, social web evangelist, marketing quasi-savant, semi-professional editor…you get the idea. Dude who has lots of thoughts about web stuff. The future home of that focus is InternetSherpa.com, which you can’t see because I have a big curtain up over it until it’s ready.
Focus: on Lance Brown, man about town. Lance who dances in France with ants in his pants (if you ask my grade-and-middle school classmates). “Prance” (if you ask my old friend Greg Sears, before I made him call me “Ed” instead). “Crash” (if you ask my mom’s old co-workers, back when I was rocking 1-2 car crashes a year). Guy with hundreds of nature and animal pictures and videos. Dude with more past jobs and future projects than phalanges and teeth combined. Humble egotist. Brilliant idiot. And, most relevantly, next-level narcissist. The future home of that focus? Lance Magazine. (At LanceBrown.me, of course.) Tagline: “So much Lance, you’ll puke with joy.” ‘Nuff said? I should hope so. I’m starting to puke a little myself, right now.
That one’s also behind a curtain, but it wants out pretty bad. Like 7-year-old me, it wants to get naked and climb out on the roof of the front porch for all to see. But, more like 40-year-old me, it has no plans to go back inside when a passing driver finally decides to pull over and knock on the door to tell my mom I’m out there. “You don’t own me, random passing driver! Don’t look if you don’t like what you see!” (That’s 40-year-old me speaking.)
Still with me? Out on the roof of the front porch with me, naked? (Let’s face it, it’s a little awkward if you’re not naked too.)
Good. Together we’ll conquer the wild world of the social web, unpack the wisdom garnered from 15+ years of daily web work, plumb the deepest depths of my comically-tarnished soul, and traverse the farthest ranges of my oddball life. Plus, there will be peacock photos!
I’m a work-at-home consultant, writer, entrepreneur and creative type who is looking for an apprentice and assistant to help me grow my business and further my many other projects. The position is in Lake Los Angeles, CA, in my home office. It will start at 30 hours a week, hopefully expanding to full-time or more before very long.
The number one qualification for this job is a relentless desire to learn and be constantly challenged to do new things. Other important qualities are attention to detail, good communication skills (including spelling and grammar), fearlessness, good customer service skills, and a positive and expansive attitude. Honesty and openness are also key. Having your own laptop computer would be good too.
The work will start with supporting me in creating and maintaining websites for clients and myself, mostly using WordPress, but will very quickly expand to cover any number of other tasks relating to projects that I have been preparing for some time in anticipation of finding someone to help grow my enterprise. I’ll also need help with time and project management as we try to best divide the available resources to get the most done.
You should be prepared to develop a working knowledge of the following in a relatively short amount of time (i.e., the first 6 months or so):
-web site development (WordPress, Joomla, HTML, CSS, PHP) -social media (blogging, Twitter, Facebook, etc.) -marketing -fundraising (non-profit and commercial) -podcasting and web broadcasting -film/media development (web series, shorts, features; screenwriting, all aspects of production) -media relations (press releases, interviews, etc.) -activism (online and on-the-ground) -event planning -writing/editing/proofreading -grant-writing and the other aspects of creating a non-profit from scratch -digital music production -and more.
(You don’t need to know those things already, but you should be ready to learn–ideally, even spending time in your off-time growing your knowledge and strengthening your skills.)
The ideal candidate would become an apprentice in the truest sense–learning and eventually taking over my primary business of creating websites for clients and supporting them in their web-related endeavors. I’ve been doing this for several years and am ready to pass on my knowledge–and eventually my clients–to someone else, who would then take over as a partner in that business while I move into new (related) realms and pursue a number of passion projects that have been patiently waiting for my attention. Once we develop a groove together, we would work on bringing in someone else to help take over some of the new work, and on and on as things grow.
If you are not afraid to learn and work independently, and would like to benefit from my 15 years of experience working for myself on the web, my 20+ years of experience in activism, and approximately 10 years of preparing to launch a series of interesting projects into the stratosphere, then you should get in touch. If you are likely to wuss out after a month or two, or don’t have a good appreciation for the value and reward of doing challenging work, you should probably save us both the trouble and go get some “regular” job. This is not that.
If you can survive a year with me, you will learn how to start and run your own business or non-profit, how to get in the newspaper or on national radio, how to create a movie (and a video production company) from scratch, how to make music, write a novel, launch a website, run a podcast, get a grant or venture capital or a sponsor, and more. You will learn at least 20 different skills that have value in the job marketplace, and will have a ready opportunity to apply those skills in a leadership capacity within my existing web freelance business or in one of the side enterprises that we will have developed together over that span of time.
Sound good? Great! Let’s get to it. Get in touch ASAP and show me what you’ve got.
(You may be too young to recognize the reference in the title of this post. If so–here, let me Google that for you.)
I have a lot of Facebook pages.
I’m a guy with a lot of projects, and due to limitations on my time and resources, many of them are mostly lying in wait. As I’ve written in a past column, I had a period several years back where I put way too many things on my plate, and I burned out and had to drop most of them and just focus on being happy and healthy. But I’ve been prepping for a comeback ever since, and that day is getting closer and closer.
In the meantime, I’ve been carefully stoking the embers of lots of projects-to-be. Soon I’ll have an assistant, and will be able to start re-growing my empire. Then I’ll get another assistant, and another, and a partner, and then more assistants, and more partners…MUHAHAHA!!!!
Oops–did I just go into my taking-over-the-world voice? Sorry about that.
Anyway…here are Facebook pages for some of my brewing projects. I’d appreciate it a lot if you’d get in on the ground floor by “Like”-ing any that seem interesting to you. Then, when my dark reign finally begins, you’ll be one of the lucky ones who are spared my wrath, MUHAHAHA! Er, I mean, you’ll get updates about my projects as soon as they’re available.
(My reign will actually be quite peaceful. You don’t need to like my FB pages in order to be safe. Though obviously, it couldn’t hurt.)
So, here you go…like me. Really–like me!
Freelance Lance
Perhaps the most active of my pages–the official FB page for my freelance web site building/Internet consulting business.
Green Liberty is dedicated to finding a path to the future that combines “green” values with libertarian principles (a.k.a., the ultimate win-win scenario).
A fun pet project that will become the epicenter of all things Lance. It’s an attempt to create a container that can actually hold me. (Yeah, I know…good luck with that, right?)
My soon-to-be-launched political talk program. Just gonna bring the old political paradigm to a crashing halt, and start a new dawn of unity and positive solutions. No biggie.
…I took the SATs for the first time. Why was I taking the SATs in grade 7, you ask? There’s a program called CTY (Center for Talented Youth), run by Johns Hopkins University. It’s what would these days be called “nerd camp”. To qualify for CTY, students of certain ages could take the SATs, and if they got a high enough score, they’d get to take CTY’s college-level courses, on a college campus. Pretty badass as far as nerd camping goes. I didn’t go this year, because while my Math SAT score was high enough to qualify for the math and science courses, I had no interest in those, and my Verbal score wasn’t high enough to qualify me for the writing courses I wanted to take. (I believe I got a 510 Math, 420 Verbal.) I got introduced to CTY via my school’s “ET” (Exceptionally Talented) program, which was just about the only truly intellectually-compelling part of my entire K-12 experience. Certainly the only one in K-8 that I can recall. (Thank you, Mrs. Graham.)
…I had a bunch of girlfriends–but only one that really mattered. My first real girlfriend, Heather Moon. We went out for two and a half months, and it was a pretty classic innocent young love situation. Long talks on the phone, lots of public hand-holding, writing her name all over my notebooks…the whole routine. I can still picture the first time I went to hold her hand. I believe it was during an in-class movie or slideshow. I took probably 15 minutes slowly inching my hand across my desk and over to hers. Our first (and only?) kiss was just as innocent and ridiculous; I can picture that too. We were outside at recess, and I don’t remember why, but there was like public buildup to the fact that we were going to kiss. So there was a crowd of kids all gathered around watching when I finally kissed Heather. It was weird, but also pretty sweet in that innocent-young-love type of way. I think we broke up pretty soon after that. ;-) It wasn’t my call, and I was pretty crushed. Another classic young love cliche–my first broken heart. And probably the first time I punched a wall due to relationship heartache. It would not be the last.
…The rest of my girlfriends that year came in a mad rush, on the rebound from being dumped by Heather. I didn’t mean to diminish their importance above, but as I recall, I “went out with” like 4 girls in the few weeks after our breakup, and most of those so-called relationships barely lasted long enough for a couple of evening phone calls and some hanging out in the hallway between classes. One was like a day, another a couple of days…like that. I counted them at the time because they were official by middle school standards–both parties had agreed to be “going out”–but they were otherwise insubstantial. (No reflection on the girls involved, who are all lovely women now–and were lovely young women then.) And I probably still count them now because that little stretch in 7th grade was the most active stretch I would have in my K-12 years. And also probably because they really were an extension of that first big relationship with Heather. My heart had been opened, and my “love light” turned on. The rebounds afterward were just attempts to keep that light going. And for the girls involved, I think there was probably just some “buzz” around me because I was such a public boyfriend with Heather. How public? She got me–and I wore–a shirt that said “Loverboy” on it. (Loverboy was a band from back then, but in this case the shirt was meant as a label for me…even though, as mentioned, we were actually pretty chaste.) Then when the girls wised up to the fact that they had gotten tricked into going out with basically a nerd, they moved on.
…It may be that I was still 12 when my next huge crush began, on Sherry Green. But I think of that as mostly an 8th grade thing. (In fact, that’s basically what I think of when I think of 8th grade.) But now as I think it through, it probably did start at the tail end of 7th grade and into that summer.
…I think 7th grade was when I fought with Mike Stowers and got suspended from school for the first time. Though “fought with” might be a stretch. He tripped me in class as I was walking past his desk, and I responded by turning around and attacking him. It’s funnier than it sounds, in part because Mike was the tallest kid in our class, I was just about the shortest. The “fight” didn’t last long, and we were both sent to the (vice? I think) principal’s office, and suspended for I want to say 5 days. In a tradition that would be repeated later when I fought with Doug Boyle, Mike and I became friends as a result of the whole experience. Good times.
…If we’re keeping track, I’m nearly certain that I did win the sales contest for my class this year, and I actually feel like this was probably the year I won the boombox. (Not the year earlier as I claimed in “age 11″.)
…Musically, I was a full-on superfan of anything on the radio. I would tape Casey Kasem’s weekly top 40 program–and the year-end top 100 program–and I was beginning to copy any album I could get my hands on to cassette tape (you know, for my new boombox). Most of those were from my sisters’ collection at the time–Billy Squier, Bob Seger, John Cougar, maybe Stevie Nicks, Led Zeppelin IV, Journey, Meat Loaf’s Bat Out of Hell, etc. Though there was also Jack Wagner’s “All I Need”, which became a major anthem for me, and began a pretty robust Jack Wagner fanship that lasted a few years. His was in many ways the first “real” concert I went to. (Prior to that I had seen Beatlemania and, when I was much younger, Shaun Cassidy.) That was probably early 1985, based on when “All I Need” was charting.
…I started writing poetry, of a sort, in 7th grade. In homeroom every morning, I would write a limerick in one of those little CVS pocket notebooks. I found some of them a couple years ago. They were terrible. But I was writing.
…In middle school, I came in second place in our school’s spelling bee, I believe it was 3 years on a row. Thus, I missed qualifying to compete in the county spelling bee (and possibly work my way up to state and nationals) by one place (one word actually), three times. This year would have been the second of those three, if memory serves me right. I found this pretty frustrating back then, especially as I felt at the time that there was injustice involved in a couple of those sessions. And I still think of it that way, honestly, even though I only vaguely remember what one of the “injustices” was about. (Damn you, Mr. Sturtevant!! ;-)) But looking back on it, it’s definitely just as well that I didn’t advance to more competitive levels of the spelling bee. I wouldn’t have gained anything, except for a lot of pressure.
That’s all I’ve got for now. I’ve scanned in some pics from my yearbook, but they may have to wait until morning. Meanwhile, I’ve got to get this posted, so I can get to age 13, and 14–I’m getting behind!
Perhaps you remember something I did at age 12 that didn’t make the list…feel free to fill in the blanks by posting a comment. :-)
…Oh! I think it was 7th grade that me and a friend accidentally burned down Musante’s field*. That’s kind of a big one to miss. I don’t know for sure when that was, but I do remember my 5th grade teacher Mr. Demick confronted me in the hall a few days after the fire. We hadn’t gotten caught, but I guess somehow the word had leaked to Mr. Demick. He handed me a newspaper article about a fire–a different one–where (I think) multiple firefighters had been injured or killed. I don’t think he said much; the point he was trying to make was clear. Mr. Demick was a good guy. The fire was a mistake (we had been playing around just burning little grass tufts at the edge of the park, and the wind took over and it got out of control, and we took off in a panic), but his sober warning definitely had an impact on me, in terms of being thoughtful about the consequences of one’s actions.
*Musante’s field was a big empty property that filled the center of a huge block of residential properties. Dozens of houses, including ours (and the one where my sister now lives) surrounded that field.
I’ve been doing a series of tweets for the past couple days, counting down (or up, technically) to my 40th birthday on August 20th. I’ve been using the hashtag #Countdownto40 and posting some tidbits about my life in the years leading up to now. I started with age 9 a couple days ago, and then 10 yesterday, and today is time for the age 11 tweets. (I’ve timed it so that I will reach age 40 when I reach age 40…get it?) You can read my tweets about ages 9 and 10 here via a Twitter search for #Countdownto40.
But as I “get older”, there are more things to mention, and I was already starting to blow up people’s timelines with my age 9 and 10 tweets. So I think I will be doing most of my spilling in blog posts from here on out. So here goes:
When I was 11…
…My neighbor and supposed friend Ralph Deane beat me up in my driveway while we waited for the bus one morning. (My driveway was the bus stop.) The previous day or so, I had called his sister Tammy a bitch, when she kicked at my bike as I was riding past her on the road. Ralph decided he had to defend her honor, and demanded that I apologize/take it back. I replied that she had in fact been a bitch via her action, and I stood by my words. So he punched the crap out of me in the face and stomach. (I feebly swung my arms a couple times, but Ralph was a man-child, and I was a tiny little dude. It was very much no contest.) As the bus pulled up, Ralph and Tammy got on, and I bleedingly limped my way back into the house, skipping school for the day. When I reported Ralph to my homeroom teacher Mr. Walsh the next day, Mr. Walsh just laughed. I think he was happy that I finally got some pushback for my “wise” mouth. I kind of despised him after that. And I definitely never forgave Ralph. He tried to friend me on Facebook a year or so ago. No thanks, Ralph. P.S. – Your sister was being a bitch.
…I think it was 6th grade (with my birthday being in late August, age 11 is basically synonymous with 6th grade, age 12 with 7th, and so on) that had my “one sleeve up, one sleeve down” phase. I regularly wore long-sleeve dress shirts to school, and for a period of time in 6th grade, I decided to start wearing one sleeve rolled up, while leaving the other down. Why? When I was asked that by my classmates (and I was, a lot), my answer was “Why do you have both sleeves down [or up, depending on the case]?” In other words, I did it just to challenge pre-disposed notions of how things should be.* So people would have to think “Huh?” when they saw me walk by. I did that sort of thing quite a bit throughout my school years, but the one-sleeve-rolled-up thing may have been the most overt and ridiculous of all of them.
…My musical tastes finally diverged from my Mom’s and my sisters’, via a cassette of the Beatles 20 Greatest Hits album. Me and my usually-best-friend Eric Day listened to that album a bunch, and I listened to it a whole lot more on my own. I would soon start venturing into other Beatles albums, buying the LPs of Sgt. Pepper and the White Album, and getting taped copies of almost every other album they had. They became my first favorite band (and remained so until Pink Floyd displaced them a few years later).
…I’m pretty sure I won the top sales slot for my grade in the school sale, which I think was for wrapping paper that year. I won the top slot or near it 3 years running I think, and 6th grade may have been when I won a boombox as a prize for my efforts.
…I think year 11 was also when my love affair with Coca-Cola began. My mom’s boyfriend Bruce was an avid Coke drinker, and when he became a regular feature at our house, Coke became a regular feature in our refrigerator, and soon thereafter became a regular feature in my diet. It wasn’t long before I had an unhealthy addiction to/love for the beverage, which sadly continues to this day. (Though probably not for much longer.)
Other interesting things must have happened that year, but those are the highlights that come to mind. If you remember anything noteworthy that I missed, please post it in the comments. (That’s mostly for the 70+ former schoolmates on Facebook who I’ll be sharing this post with. And my mom, who subscribes to my blog. :-))
*Long before then, in first grade as I recall it, I had come to a definite conclusion about the evils of school society/peer pressure, and had decided to stand against the inherent pressure to conform, on behalf of all those who were too cowed to do so themselves. This took a lot of different forms over the years…including the uneven sleeve experiment.
Lots of fun stuff coming up tomorrow in the age 12/7th grade edition of #Countdownto40. See you then!
(I’ll probably edit this post to add a photo from back then when I get up in the morning.)
