p²'s 2013 Over-Played Playlist -- Part One

By over-played I don't mean over-played on the radio (although that may be true also). These are the songs I played over and over this year, so if you have spent time in the car with me you might think they are over-played.

More Songs for the Holiday Season, Part Two

Here are ten more songs for your Christmas collection. You can hear the entire playlist here: The Ultimate-ish Christmas Playlist.

More Songs for the Holiday Season, Part One

I did my first Christmas song blog post in 2009, then I didn't do another one for three years. That's just craziness. So this year, I'm going to do a two-parter. Plus, as a bonus – because Brandon asked for it – I've created a Youtube Christmas playlist with all the songs from all the posts. I may even throw a few bonus ones in there to see if you're paying attention. Part two tomorrow.

Classic Christmas Comedy, Part 2

A little more seasonal silliness to get you in the Christmas spirit.

Classic Christmas Comedy, Part One

It's no secret to anyone who knows me (or reads this blog regularly) that I love Christmas. I've written posts about my favorite Christmas music, as well as one about things to do to make the holiday more fun. I even wrote one about counting your blessings. I can be very sincere and polyanna when it comes to Christmas. But really, who are we kidding? Read the rest of the blog. So tonight (and tomorrow), with no real writing involved at all, here are some of my TRULY favorite holiday stories, sketches, stand-up, etc.

Seven Ridiculous Things I'm Worried About Today

Tonight is the presentation for our final projects for the master's program at USC. I never wanted a master's degree before last year. Now I don't think I've ever wanted to accomplish anything more than I want this.

I've practiced for this presentation. I'm totally prepared. We've been working on it all semester. All evidence points to it going fine. But my stupid brain likes to concoct all sorts of scenarios where I self-destruct. And none of the scenarios is really likely (except maybe the last two). Since my degree is in digital strategy and social media, I'll give you a Buzzfeed-style post about what's going through my head today. Here are all the ridiculous things I'm worried will happen tonight:

50 in 50

Improbably, considering the way I lived for several years in my 30s and early 40s, I'm going to be 50 in 50 days. Even though I've been sober for more than six years now – therefore less likely to do something that would lead to an early demise – I'm a little surprised that I've gotten so close. I never expected to live to be 50. Well, at least not from the time I was about 23.

Ask just about anyone who was gay and in his 20s in 1987 and you won't find a ton of us who expected to live this long. And you will find a lot of us who didn't. More than 25,000 people died of AIDS in the US in the 80s. I couldn't find stats on how many of them were gay, but I'm going to go out on a limb and say it was a lot. The original name for the disease was GRID (Gay-Related Immune Deficiency). I remember reading an article in the paper about it in 1982 or 1983. I wasn't even 20 years old and hadn't even acknowledged to myself that I was gay, and already I was terrified of dying.

Faith

Today is my sixth anniversary of getting sober. According to my app, that means I've gone 2,193 consecutive days without drinking or using drugs (unless prescribed by a doctor). At this point, it's been quite a while since I've been surprised at waking up sober in the morning. I also pretty much expect that I'm going to make it through the day and go to bed sober again. However, when these milestones come up and I get a chance to step back and look at the big picture I'm a little overwhelmed by it.

Media-crity

It was a little strange watching the VMAs this morning after all the buzz about them on Facebook last night, but the truth is that I probably wouldn't have set aside time to watch them at all if people hadn't been buzzing about them. Other than two or three minutes where Miley Cyrus was a disaster though, I'm not sure I see what all the fuss was about. It was pretty standard fare as awards shows go. Nobody cut off anyone's acceptance speech, no one showed up on stage drunk or high (where's Renee Zellweger when you need her). Hell, Justin Bieber wasn't even there to amp up the douche bag quotient. I just jotted down some observations as I went through. Upon review, there are probably way more questions than there are observations.

Voices

I've written about the drug-induced psychosis and the voices in my head a lot on this blog, but I've written about them from the perspective of remembering them a couple years after they stopped. I found something I wrote about the voices when I was still hearing them. It was really interesting for me to see what it was like in the middle of it. I'm going to share it here tonight. I hope y'all find it interesting too. I didn't put dates on anything I was writing at the time, but I think I wrote it just before I went to rehab. I'm not sure it is totally coherent and of course as was usual back then, it just sort of ends. Enjoy.

METHodology

I stumbled across a journal tonight with a story in it that I wrote five or six years ago. I will probably tell that story here in the next day or so, but tonight I want to write about the journals I kept back then. First off, that story I came across ends in the middle of a sentence. I'm not kidding. There are five and a half pages and then it just stops mid-thought. I have no idea why I stopped writing the story. I don't even know exactly when I wrote it because it's not dated. It's handwritten in a book that I was using in the last months of my addiction and first several months of sobriety.

US Open 2013 -- Women's Preview

Back in the day, probably until about 2005 or so, women's tennis was far more interesting to me than men's tennis. I never really loved that whole Sampras, Agassi, Courier, Chang era. There were male players over the years that I really liked – Bjorn Borg, Ivan Lendl, Boris Becker – but never as much as players like Evonne Goolagong, Tracy Austin and Steffi Graf. After Graf retired, we had a minute or two that wasn't so interesting, but then the Williams sisters showed up, Jennifer Capriati returned, Kim Clijsters and Amelie Mauresmo were in the mix. The early 2000s were filled with great players and fun tennis.

US Open 2013 -- Men's Preview

Juan Martin Del Potro 2009

Note: Had to abandon the one word title format for tonight and tomorrow

The US Open starts Monday. It's been nice not having a full-time job all year. I get to watch way more tennis than usual. Today we preview the men's draw, tomorrow the women's. As usual, I only list the seeded players that interest me. 

Lisbon

The other day when I was writing about Disneyland I mentioned my trip to Portugal in 2001 and said I should tell that story. Today seems like as good a day as any for that. Originally, the trip was my friend's idea. It was when I was living in Philadelphia and smoking pot with the Duchess of Broad St. (not his real name) every day. When I say we smoked every day, I'm exaggerating of course. It couldn't have been more than six nights a week at most. I know that because I remember smoking pot with other people when the Duchess wasn't around.

Supercalifragilisticexpialidocious

Note: The one-word title thing is starting to tax my imagination.

Last night I posted the top ten songs from Disney animated films as sung by the characters in the films. Tonight it's my top ten songs from those films sung by pop singers. Some of the songs on the list are the official versions from the end credits and some are covers. They were all fun to listen to again. I might need to make a play list.

200

Tonight's post is the 200th post on psquared to the nth. [Balloons fall from the ceiling.] To celebrate, I thought I'd choose a topic I'm really passionate about – Disney music. I love it. It's really ridiculous too, because I don't generally love Broadway musicals and I typically hate movie musicals (with the exceptions of Grease and Xanadu). For some reason though, cartoon characters breaking out in song works for me. I'm going to do this post in two parts (part two tomorrow night). Tonight's list will be my favorite songs from Disney animated features – sung by the characters in the movie. Tomorrow night will be my ten favorite pop versions of songs from Disney movies. To keep it interesting, the rule is that a song can only go on one list. So you won't see the biggies on this list tonight because they will most likely be on tomorrow's list. These songs are as much about the movies as they are the songs. Enjoy!

Stuff

We moved in to our new apartment in Los Angeles last month. My boyfriend drove all of his belongings across the country and we moved many of my belongings from the house downstairs where I was staying to the apartment about 200 yards away. Not everything was here though. We then had to drive down to San Diego to get the stuff that I had left in the attic in the house I lived in there. This is the first time since I left Brooklyn in March of 2010 that none of my stuff is in storage. I lived in one (pretty large) room in San Diego. My friend already had a fully equipped house when I got there so a lot my stuff wasn't necessary. Then I moved to LA to go to school and from January to July, it was pretty much the same deal only I had room for even less stuff.

Belinda

The summer is almost over and I haven't seen Belinda Carlisle perform live yet. Two years ago today I got back from a trip to Atlanta and went directly to the Go-Go's concert at the Greek Theater on Belinda's birthday (which of course is today). Then last year I just happened to be in LA in June for something recovery related and I learned that she was performing at the Gay Pride festival that night. It feels like a Southern California tradition now to see Belinda in the summer.

SBS*

If you don't count one semester at the University of Tampa when I was 17 and two months in Monterrey when I was 21, I've lived in four cities in my life – two of them two separate times. I was in Philadelphia the first 23 years of my life, San Diego for the next nine, Philadelphia for five more, New York for seven and a half (two years in Manhattan, two in Astoria, one in Manhattan and two and a half in Brooklyn), back to San Diego for almost three and now in Los Angeles since January. If nothing else, I am good at moving. You'd have an easier time keeping track of someone in witness protection than of knowing my whereabouts from one year to the next.

Disneyland

I went to Disneyland by myself today. I had never been there alone before and since I have an annual pass, I decided to see how different it would be solo. I knew it wouldn't be weird or uncomfortable. I go places by myself all the time – the beach, the movies, Portugal. Hmm. Maybe later in the month I'll blog about that trip. It's a pretty good story. I wholeheartedly recommend going to a European country alone. One of the two or three best vacations of my life. But I digress (there's a shocker).

APPeal

I realized something as I was sitting around doing next to nothing today. Here I am two-thirds of the way through my master's program in digital strategy and social media, and I haven't posted anything relating to those topics yet this month. I know I posted about school, but I feel like I should at least be talking about some of this stuff that I spend all my time looking at, thinking about, learning and using. Don't worry though. I'm not writing about anything intellectual (god forbid). What I'm going to do is show you some mobile apps I love that you may or may not already know about. I'll try to stay away from the really obvious ones like Instagram. Who knows, maybe one of them will end up on your phone tomorrow.

Miracle

There is something that people “in recovery” say to other people in recovery on the anniversary of their sobriety date. Yes, congratulations and happy birthday. Not those. I haven't heard it quite as much recently, but as my life has gotten bigger and more busy I suppose I spend less time around people in recovery as I used to. I say it as well. “You're a miracle.”

Anonymous

A friend on Facebook shared a link to an interesting article today. The article is a month old now, but since I just saw it today it's new to me. It's from The New York Times Television section. It's written by Kristen Johnson, who apparently is starring in a series on TV Land these days. I remember her from 3rd Rock from the Sun, a television show so old that it's from a time when I didn't realize Joseph Gordon Levitt was hot. I'll summarize, but in case you want to read it for yourself, here's the link:Turning Addiction into a Sideshow.

Hell

I'm buried in my final paper for my Research Methodology class, which is due tomorrow. Trust me when I tell you that you don't want to read anything I'm writing tonight.

Witches

I was scrolling through the stats of my blog today. Recently I've begun looking occasionally to see which posts have gotten the most attention. I used to only look at the five or six that were on the screen when I posted the new one, but since I've been in grad school studying digital and social media strategy, I've tried to be more aware of what engages y'all and what doesn't. Of course, internet metrics are tricky. Sometimes weird things cause can cause glitches in the stats. For instance, according to the blog stats, on July 29 my blog had over 1700 pageviews. That would be awesome, if there were any real chance it were true. I question it because all the days since (when there have been new posts) have averaged between 75 and 150 pageviews (there aren't a lot of you reading this thing). So it's always risky trying to draw any conclusions from the data. But what the hell? I don't have anything better to do today.

Whitney

I was sitting here completely blank. I literally couldn't think of one thing to write about. For all the gaps in time between blog posts, you might think that happens all the time. In reality, it almost never happens. The gaps occur because I'm not disciplined enough to sit my ass down and demand that I bang my fingers on the keyboard to produce something other than a pithy (in my opinion) status update. Usually, within a few minutes of sitting down something comes to me. Tonight, panic was almost setting in. I resorted to just aimlessly surfing the web for an idea. Guess what? It turns out Whitney Houston would have turned 50 today.

Boi-cott!

I've taken some heat recently (and in the past) because of my belief that boycotts, while having their place in society, are now the lazy man's tool of political action. I've stated several times that I feel like in most cases boycotts are all for show, a way for us to feel and look like we care about civil rights causes without actually doing anything about it. I'm doubling down on that statement now. I now think boycotts are becoming detrimental to social and political change movements.

Doubt

When I started writing this blog in November of 2009, I had a couple of goals. One was just to start writing again. I had this notion that I couldn't write unless I was high, so for the first two years of sobriety I barely even tried to write. Every once in a while I would post something on my old blog, but in two years I think I put up five posts. Then Friendster, where my old blog was hosted (god that sounds ridiculous now – I had a blog on Friendster), changed its server or something and my entire blog got erased because I hadn't paid the $2.95 a month to keep it active. Just about everything was gone.

Tweenybopper

So the first four days of the month I was trying this “one-word title” gimmick. But I'm having trouble condensing the idea for tonight's post – Five Songs I Love that I'm Pretty Sure I'm Supposed to Hate – into one word. I'll think on it while I'm writing. If I do come up with a one-word title, I'll leave this paragraph here so at least you'll know what the hell this is supposed to be about.

Remarkable

For as many times as I tried to smoke meth under a blanket to avoid detection by “them”, it's actually a miracle I never set anything (or anyone) on fire. Of course there was the last time I did it, which was the last time I used almost six years ago. But that was not even close to the only time. In fact, by the time that happened I was getting pretty good at it. I'd figured out that two chairs was better for draping the blanket over rather than one chair and my head. Actually, I might have just realized that now. I'm fairly certain that never occurred to me when it would have been a useful thing to know.

Sloth

Tonight's post looks to be mostly just a placeholder so I don't fall off the writing-every-day wagon two days in. To be fair, I am writing today. It's just that I'm writing a report on the time capsule survey I fielded a few weeks ago. You may remember an earlier post where I asked you all to complete it. Much to my surprise and delight, 243 people responded.

Crazy

There are two (at least) reasons I like to write every day in August. One reason is that I tend to get a little crazy at this time every year. Not only is my sobriety date in August, but my father's birthday is this month as well. The combination seems to knock me off kilter just a bit. The good news is that now I know it's coming. As I approached my first sober anniversary in 2008, I was a madman and I had no idea what the hell was going on (I suppose for those of you that insist it is wrong to end a sentence with a preposition I had no idea on what the hell was going).I was just filled with anxiety and had a knot in my stomach almost constantly.

Imperfect

Well, I guess all the pressure is off this year. Regular readers of the blog might know that I have a tradition in August (the month I got sober) of trying to post something on the blog every day of the month. In 2011 I did it – 33 posts in 31 days. Last year, I only actually got something up on the blog 28 of the days. Since I completely spaced on yesterday being August 1, I blew it right from the get-go. But one of the biggest differences in me today from six years ago is that I no longer am willing to let the inability to be perfect stop me from making an effort. So, I’m going to give it a go and see if I can do better than last year and hit 30 of the 31 days this month.

Please Do My Homework for Me

Just a quick post today to ask for your help. As part of my master's program in digital strategies and social media at USC, I have to field an online survey. The survey looks at the correlation between physical time capsule* participation and the use of online photo-sharing websites and mobile apps. Obtaining responses from a large and diverse group of people is essential to ensure the results are representative. The survey should take approximately five minutes to complete. No, really. The average completion time is under five minutes.

If you could take the survey and share the link with any friends or family you think would be willing to take it, that would be awesome. I'll post the findings here in case you're interested to see them.

Time Capsules and Photo-Sharing Websites and Mobile Apps

*For the purposes of this survey, a time capsule is described as a collection of objects and information contributed by a group of people as a means of communication with a group of people (either that same group or a different group) in the future. Time capsules are often created as part of a ceremony or celebration (high school graduation, the bicentennial anniversary of a city, etc.). A time capsule is sealed and buried (or otherwise stored) with the intention of having it opened at a later date.

You Probably Won't Like This

I have a feeling I'm going to piss some people off tonight. We've become a country that will not only shoot the messenger when we don't like the message, we'll try to make sure he can't get healthcare for the gunshot wound. Anyway, I've been thinking about (like just about everyone I know) the impending decisions from the Supreme Court on marriage equality. There was a sentiment on Facebook today that because the Court issued a ruling that flagrantly hurts non-republican voters (giving southern states that previously had to get pre-approval from the federal government to change voter registration laws the go ahead to just do as they please from here on out), we might be in trouble tomorrow. After thinking on it a little bit, I feel like that ruling may (MAY, not will) be good for the marriage equality rulings.

Slumber in the Grass -- 2013 Wimbledon Women's Preview

Chris Evert / Martina Navratilova

Tonight we look at the women's draw. Unfortunately, I can't only preview the women who have a real shot at winning the tournament because then it would just be a blog post about Serena Williams. And while there certainly is enough material to fill an entire blog just about her last few weeks, this post is about Wimbledon. So, we'll run down most of the usual suspects (and maybe one or two unusual ones). Onward.

The Men of the All-England Club -- 2013 Wimbledon Preview

Feliciano Lopez

It's been a while. I haven't written about tennis since last August (hell, I haven't written about anything here since March). It's strange though, because being in grad school has given me the opportunity to watch way more tennis this year than I have in about the last three. Spread the textbooks all over the bed and pretend to read them while watching eight hours of the Tennis Channel. Sadly, I won't get to watch as much of Wimbledon because: A. Research Methodology (or whatever the class is called) is sucking the life out of me; and 2. I'll be in Philly the first week of the tournament for my nephew's wedding.

Since we all know how bored I get writing about players I don't care about, I'm not even going to bother listing the ones that don't matter this time. It's just a waste of a strike-through. Enough chit-chat. Here we go.

What I Learned ...

… from Gretchen Fox, owner of the consulting firm, grtchfx.com, who was our guest speaker for last week's class.

(with a shout out to Esquire magazine for the format)

Note: I wrote this for my Intro to Online Communities class. I'm sharing it here for two reasons: A. I think y'all will find it useful and interesting; and 2. I've always wanted to do a What I've Learned (it's my favorite Esquire feature) so I'm not passing up the opportunity to post it on my blog.

p²'s Favorite Songs of 2012: Time Travel Edition, Part Two

Previously on p² to the nth: p² traveled back in time to post part one of his favorite songs of 2012. If you missed it, you can read it here: Part One

Without any further fanfare, here are the top 11 songs on the list.