Put This in Your Ears: “Need You Now,” Cut Copy

The video just looks like “inspirational” stock footage spliced in with the band. Genius.

The Subtle Tyranny of the Birthday Favor Bag

– What is this mom?
– … A hacky sack.
– What do you do with it?
– I can’t bring myself to tell you, sweetheart.
– What?
– Ask your father.

Life List Workshop with Me. (Also, Want, $1,000?)

The Go Mighty team has been building a community of people who make things happen. Come be part of it.

I’m teaching a one-week Life List Workshop through Skillshare, starting April 8. It’s online, it’s only $20, and you should do it.

As part of the class, the Go Mighty team is choosing one participant (or group of participants, if you feel like doing a team project) to receive a $1,000 grant toward turning a dream into an action.

If you’ve been wanting to make a Life List, or meaning to choose a few goals to tackle, or thinking about supporting others who are working on their lists, you could do that later. But later is dumb. Instead, let’s do it right now:

See you there, doers. I will bring pizza.

Put This in Your Ears: “Helpless,” Poindexter

Helpless on Spotify

Image Source

It’s on my Life List to post a new song every day for a year, so I’m asking for recs. What are you listening to lately?

Movie Night at the Barn

This post is brought to you by The New Santa Fe from Hyundai.

Do you guys remember this hubbity bubba?

That tiny man turned six in February, and he’s shaving now. He wears my socks. He is big enough that I can no longer carry him in from the car when he’s sleeping. Oh, my heart.

For his birthday I wanted to do a movie night, where everyone cozies up under blankets and you pass warm beverages around in thermoses. My sister has a red barn that was built for maximum quaint-itude, so I bribed Hank’s cousins to clean it out for us (thanks, Trevor and Emma!), and we had the party there.

All the little city kids chased goats and chickens around screaming, swung on the tire swing, roasted weenies, and posed briefly for a Norman Rockwell painting.

We had cupcakes with spray-painted farm animal toppers, fired up the popcorn machine (surprisingly cheap to rent, by the way), and ladled hot cider. As you’ll see in the video below, it was kind of an epic day.

We have video because Hyundai loaned us a car for a couple days and asked if they could film the party. Hank is way into making movies — I’ve been stalling on his oft-repeated request for his own YouTube channel — so I said yes. Of course, I was picturing some guy with a camcorder, hanging out and having cake with us.

Uh… as you will see, they went all out. It was a whole crew with a trailer and thingies to attach cameras to the car. They even complied with Hank’s request to yell “ACTION!” while we bumped up the country backroads. It was all very satisfying and movie-makey for Hank’s taste.

Of course, Hank has been asking about the movie for weeks while they edited everything together. The end result is both gorgeous and a little surreal for me, but he is very excited that you get to see it. So without further ado, Hank’s small screen debut: