Zoomtertainment, Bed, Bath, and Beyond.
First, a few words about an article. The article.
(How’s that for a line about a, an, the? In effect, about all the articles. I’m incorrigible!)
I am, of course, referring to Bed, Bath, and Beyond, which regular readers of this newsletter may remember, I’ve been ‘threatening’ to write for a few weeks now.
Well, guess what? It’s hot off the press. It was published six hours ago. I think it reflects a discernible improvement in my writing. Did you just think “Anything would be an improvement?”
I worked with Ellen Fishbein, my writing coach on this, and am glad I did. She helped me see areas I‘ve been blind to. However, as I address these blind-spots with a quick shoulder-check before changing lanes, I’m seeing other weak spots rise to prominence. It’s almost like a writer’s whack-a-mole.
But seriously, do read Bed, Bath, and Beyond, and let me know what you think. If you like it, do share it.
Back to the present moment…
First, a quick update on the ‘work’ front. I just joined the board of RS Software, a public company headquartered in India and operations across the world. They are doing some very cool work in FinTech, and I’m looking forward to contributing while learning about a new domain in this new world of contactless commerce.
Otherwise, how’s my October been so far?
Fantastic. Entertaining. Educative. Thanks for asking.
A few weeks ago, I decided to pursue an interesting path of least resistance:
If the New York Times featured anything interesting about (online) entertainment in this new world, I would check it out.
This simple heuristic saw me checking out three amazing Zoomtertainment experiences in the last ten days alone:
Freestyle Love Supreme. NYT article (2019, acted on it only now. Go bookmarks)
I found my tribe over five hours this past weekend. A welcoming group of hip-hop fans and students joined in the hip by a love for improv rap. I haven’t had so much fun in any class to date.Here we are - Theatre for One. NYT article
Tickets for this are snapped in less than a minute when they come up at 10 am EST on Mondays. I first got one for my wife, Tina’s, birthday. I found the concept of improvised 1-1 theatre so fascinating that I signed up for myself too.The Journey. NYT article
Let me just copy the headline from the link above: In ‘The Journey,’ Scott Silven Tours Your Mind. He does, and it’s beautifully done. I loved it so much, I bought another ticket and forced my mom to watch it yesterday. She (said she) loved it.
I think there’s something beautiful happening. Some amazingly creative and talented people are pushing the boundaries of what is possible through zoom-ifying a real-world experience. Scratch that. They’re actually embracing the constraints and seeing them as opportunities. A new medium. Not a force-fit.
More on this later. My spidey sense tells me that the above insight could be the kernel of an essay with the working title: It’s a beautiful (digital) world.
Name Place Animal Thing
This newsletter, you may recall from its name, and despite my rambling, is a namesake of the “yet to be published” book of the same name. There’s been a ton of progress on the book, I’m happy to report. Here’s a quick update:
Finished five rounds of edits. I think of them as five airports I need to go to in sequence: Make It Right (MIR), Line By Line (LBL), Hemmingway App (HWA), Grammarly App (GMA), and finally, Read it Aloud (RIA).
While I realize you probably aren’t interested in writing a book, the Read-It-Aloud edit is awesome. I actually Read. It. Aloud. And changed so much. It’s very very different from reading in your mind.
Do it with your next email, and see words like plethora, aforementioned, and albeit magically vanish. Remember, read it aloud, not in your mind. It’s RIA, not IYM.The first human (besides me) to read my book is my book coach, Emily Gindlesparger, at Scribe. She gave me some amazing feedback that I am now working on incorporating into the final draft.
The second human to read the book is the very talented Paul Hawkins from Berlin. An author, and an illustrator, he’s helping me with a cover design, and some key illustrations. Thanks, Amrinder, for your advice on this. And thanks, MV Bhaskar, for introducing me to Reedsy where I first met Paul.
The third human to read the book this weekend after I make the aforementioned edits will be my wife, Tina. This is albeit the fact that she’s my muse and usually the first human to read anything I write. This time around, I have a plethora of edits to work on first, and I wanted her to see the final draft first.
See, I didn’t Read-That-Aloud.
PS: do the dozen (I counted) hyperlinks irritate you? Please do let me know. I wrote this for you. I know these links already :)
Till next time.
Photo by Max Murauer on Unsplash