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It is fey, like Tina Fey, and buk, with a big, lingeringly long Boo Radley or Halloween-infused kind of Booooo! Feybuk became the standard name that went viral with our household and friends, its origins from my early morning drives to work listening to the local Latino radio stations in the Bay Area. I have a guilty pleasure in my love for the occasional Banda or Norteño full volume jam out session on my drives to work. It is fun to be enclosed in a whirlpool of oom-pah-pah, oom-pah-pah Mexican-polka beats or über-fast quebraditas that no one can hear because of the trusty Cone of Silence insulation of your rolled-up windows. The radio announcers would inevitably mention websites and then peddle listeners for their Likes “en El Feybuk.” The pronunciation was contagious. This was in the early days of facebook, before Latino radio stations upgraded to add the ‘s’ sound that was missing for years.
This week facebook feels a little sad – a little death-y. You can sense the cumulative malaise, like a mood ring that suddenly turns black as soon as it is slipped on your finger. A lion’s demise and the unfortunate details that are now a river of blood in our worldviews. We react, and we act. Tragedy is the swiftest call to human action. And I wonder if the feeling of outrage and despair was only about the lion. I think it came as the culmination of a week in which we all knew within us that the brokenness is deep and wide – so many human against human transgressions. Cecil was just the “That’s it; I have had it!” moment that spoke for all the other things we feel.
Facebook is there to be the amphitheater for today’s philosophies, or the soapbox for our politics, or the warm, cozy quilt of pictures of Corgis leaping or babies finger painting with their creamed kale all over their high chairs. Thank God for the Corgis and the babies. They are like a nicely placed sherbet palate cleanser during an 11-course meal.
And…if a person eats in a forest and there is no wifi reception and, therefore, no way to post pictures of the food on facebook, did it really happen?
I can see the conversations turning at cocktail parties and barbeques and eventually someone complains about ‘those people on facebook that post pictures of what they ate!” Oh, the déclassé horror. I started my Pictures of Food photo collection about 20 years ago, pre-social media. I knew that it was a strange little endeavor to photograph food for its pristine prettiness before any fork got to it, so I decided to diffuse the gumbiness of the act by adding a big, goofy soundtrack to it; whenever I would whip out my camera to take a photograph of an entrée, I would sing a quick “Pictures of F-o-o-o-o-o-d…!” for comedic effect. My family was so busy laughing at the weirdo song that the actual photo-taking would at that point be almost a forgotten, secondary part of the whole moment. I can still hear my nieces, whom I have ruined forever by letting them into my “Pictures of Fooood” song world, doing the same.
Defending Pictures Of Food on facebook reminds me of defending baseball once to an old employer that was slamming the sport. I like baseball because of the Red Sox. Really, I like baseball because of the transitive property: I adored my father-in-law; he loved the Red Sox.
So you stand your ground: Not low-brow. Not boring. Not a "non-athletic sport." I think, like all other sports, it is heavily doused in all great things physics: optimal trajectories, angles and force. The nuances are there. You just need to look hard and dig beyond the chewing tobacco. It is nice not to be a conversational hypocrite. It may be easier to agree and move on to the great, fat fish you have to fry around the corner, but it is so much more gratifying to politely disagree and just succinctly speak your mind. It is also nice to say, “It is not for everyone, but it works for me.” That is the beauty of facebook: it is a mixed bag of you-never-know-what-you-will-get, some of it will be amazingly compelling, and some not so. It reminds me of that phenomenon… what is that called? Oh, right: Life.
El Feybuk for good and not for evil.
Talk about “if you build it, they will come.” I cannot believe some days that facebook started as a hot or not type of platform for disgruntled young dudes. El Feybuk of today is a powerful thing.
Yet it reminds me at times of the Slam Books from junior high. Slam Books were notebooks that kids would pass around among their classmates to fill out, all while trying not to get caught by the teacher, and – end of your world as you know it – have it confiscated. Each page would have a prompt, which would start easy: name, favorite color…and move on to more juicy stuff: secret crush?…first kiss? That is how facebook feels sometimes: I like this. How about you?
But, it allowed me to meet my niece again after 33 years. Her powerwoman story is awe-inspiring, having been adopted away from our family as a little toddler, and having endured and excelled. Facebook helped us find each other in 2009, and a few years later it helped me to create a fund for her to afford to reunite with our family once more. Individuals and families – from Prague to Stockholm to Los Angeles – came out in force to donate and send support in so many ways. It wasn’t about the money, in reality, but about the way in which an online community could be summoned, and rise to say: we stand with you. And I go back to the concept of the beauty and power of witnessing.
I have a friend in Argentina, whom I have not seen since our after school afternoon playtimes, engrossed with our EasyBake oven, when we were 5. I always knew that I had had this great little friend, my first best friend, who had then moved away from Lima to Buenos Aires when we were still in grade school. But I never knew that many miles and years away, she would also remember me as I did her. She found me, miraculously, after almost 40 years.
40 years later also, another friend that now lives in Berlin reconnected with me last year. Her I remember particularly for this almost James Bond movie thing she had going on in her room. I went to play with her one afternoon while we were still in Lima, and she asks, “Do you want a refreshment?” As I start to answer, she slides the door of a minimalist, mid-century cabinet to reveal clean little glasses neatly aligned, a couple assorted flavor soda bottles, and some cookie packages. I was floored. It really was Bond-like. It reminded me of movies when the cool gadgets of the car, or the weapons room, or the ultra-rich mastermind’s home get revealed at the push of a button. I set up my imitation kiddy bar in my room the very next week. But once the playdates were over I had the unfortunate run-in with my backstock. Alone in my room with the full bottle of 7-Up beckoning, I soon had it nestled in my embrace – all 2 liters of it and a straw – holding on to the green plastic treasure like a mesmerized raccoon. And sip, sip, it soon became what I can only describe as an all-in-one-sitting binge of the total contents of it while I watched TV. So, even through the full sugar-induced high, I knew that my in-room kiddy snack bar’s days were at their end. Ah, sugar memories….
And so El Feybuk does its thang, connecting my present with my past – a big, jovial time capsule.
74. Seventy-four is the number of birthday wishes I received this year. Imagine coming home to an overstuffed mailbox in which your postman tried to cram 74 envelopes. Never underestimate the power of El Feybuk. I think those 74 greetings are our miracle of technology that we now take for granted. That is 148 typing hands or alternately maybe 148 texting thumbs, depending on the device you are using. And for that, a big, all out thank you.
Christmas time last year. Jimmy was being really cute saying how fun it would be for me to have a Saturday night out – girls' night – with one of my best friends that lives an hour away from Berkeley. Cool. Good idea. When I talked to her on the phone we were still deliberating: go out in San Francisco or the East Bay, or for me to go down to the peninsula where she is. We decided I would go down and then spend the night at her house. Her soft sell was so smooth and so without pressure that I never got wind that her one and only charge was to get me out of the house and for as long as possible so that my husband, daughter and her boyfriend could clean and sand and paint our bathroom – in just a few hours. As I was dilly-dallying with my outfit and my makeup and my hair, I try to picture Jimmy waiting across the street for me to leave with a bucket of paint in one hand and a couple 8-footers of baseboard in the other. This was my Christmas present, and the three worked hard through the night to surprise me on Sunday afternoon when I got back. They had to go so fast that some of the lines of the paint have their own sine wave rather than rigid edges, which when I see them in the morning sun, as I am getting ready for work, make me smile. I would much rather see them than any precision that would mask the fact that human, loving hands did this, and did it in a heck of a hurry, deep into the night, to surprise me the next day.
And here I have to say: choosing wall colors for an architect is a courageous thing to do. But…my daughter – who always shows a thrilling amount of resolve – texted Jimmy the color she had decided on and he, a la brava, went to the hardware store and bought the closest one resembling her picture. There are so many things about this project and this process of theirs that I love.
And that is how I ended up with a bathroom that is, not Cobalt, not Caribbean, not Cerulean, but
Feybuk Blue.
Kind Of Blue - written and performed by Miles Davis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgeF3wS0xTI
This week facebook feels a little sad – a little death-y. You can sense the cumulative malaise, like a mood ring that suddenly turns black as soon as it is slipped on your finger. A lion’s demise and the unfortunate details that are now a river of blood in our worldviews. We react, and we act. Tragedy is the swiftest call to human action. And I wonder if the feeling of outrage and despair was only about the lion. I think it came as the culmination of a week in which we all knew within us that the brokenness is deep and wide – so many human against human transgressions. Cecil was just the “That’s it; I have had it!” moment that spoke for all the other things we feel.
Facebook is there to be the amphitheater for today’s philosophies, or the soapbox for our politics, or the warm, cozy quilt of pictures of Corgis leaping or babies finger painting with their creamed kale all over their high chairs. Thank God for the Corgis and the babies. They are like a nicely placed sherbet palate cleanser during an 11-course meal.
And…if a person eats in a forest and there is no wifi reception and, therefore, no way to post pictures of the food on facebook, did it really happen?
I can see the conversations turning at cocktail parties and barbeques and eventually someone complains about ‘those people on facebook that post pictures of what they ate!” Oh, the déclassé horror. I started my Pictures of Food photo collection about 20 years ago, pre-social media. I knew that it was a strange little endeavor to photograph food for its pristine prettiness before any fork got to it, so I decided to diffuse the gumbiness of the act by adding a big, goofy soundtrack to it; whenever I would whip out my camera to take a photograph of an entrée, I would sing a quick “Pictures of F-o-o-o-o-o-d…!” for comedic effect. My family was so busy laughing at the weirdo song that the actual photo-taking would at that point be almost a forgotten, secondary part of the whole moment. I can still hear my nieces, whom I have ruined forever by letting them into my “Pictures of Fooood” song world, doing the same.
Defending Pictures Of Food on facebook reminds me of defending baseball once to an old employer that was slamming the sport. I like baseball because of the Red Sox. Really, I like baseball because of the transitive property: I adored my father-in-law; he loved the Red Sox.
So you stand your ground: Not low-brow. Not boring. Not a "non-athletic sport." I think, like all other sports, it is heavily doused in all great things physics: optimal trajectories, angles and force. The nuances are there. You just need to look hard and dig beyond the chewing tobacco. It is nice not to be a conversational hypocrite. It may be easier to agree and move on to the great, fat fish you have to fry around the corner, but it is so much more gratifying to politely disagree and just succinctly speak your mind. It is also nice to say, “It is not for everyone, but it works for me.” That is the beauty of facebook: it is a mixed bag of you-never-know-what-you-will-get, some of it will be amazingly compelling, and some not so. It reminds me of that phenomenon… what is that called? Oh, right: Life.
El Feybuk for good and not for evil.
Talk about “if you build it, they will come.” I cannot believe some days that facebook started as a hot or not type of platform for disgruntled young dudes. El Feybuk of today is a powerful thing.
Yet it reminds me at times of the Slam Books from junior high. Slam Books were notebooks that kids would pass around among their classmates to fill out, all while trying not to get caught by the teacher, and – end of your world as you know it – have it confiscated. Each page would have a prompt, which would start easy: name, favorite color…and move on to more juicy stuff: secret crush?…first kiss? That is how facebook feels sometimes: I like this. How about you?
But, it allowed me to meet my niece again after 33 years. Her powerwoman story is awe-inspiring, having been adopted away from our family as a little toddler, and having endured and excelled. Facebook helped us find each other in 2009, and a few years later it helped me to create a fund for her to afford to reunite with our family once more. Individuals and families – from Prague to Stockholm to Los Angeles – came out in force to donate and send support in so many ways. It wasn’t about the money, in reality, but about the way in which an online community could be summoned, and rise to say: we stand with you. And I go back to the concept of the beauty and power of witnessing.
I have a friend in Argentina, whom I have not seen since our after school afternoon playtimes, engrossed with our EasyBake oven, when we were 5. I always knew that I had had this great little friend, my first best friend, who had then moved away from Lima to Buenos Aires when we were still in grade school. But I never knew that many miles and years away, she would also remember me as I did her. She found me, miraculously, after almost 40 years.
40 years later also, another friend that now lives in Berlin reconnected with me last year. Her I remember particularly for this almost James Bond movie thing she had going on in her room. I went to play with her one afternoon while we were still in Lima, and she asks, “Do you want a refreshment?” As I start to answer, she slides the door of a minimalist, mid-century cabinet to reveal clean little glasses neatly aligned, a couple assorted flavor soda bottles, and some cookie packages. I was floored. It really was Bond-like. It reminded me of movies when the cool gadgets of the car, or the weapons room, or the ultra-rich mastermind’s home get revealed at the push of a button. I set up my imitation kiddy bar in my room the very next week. But once the playdates were over I had the unfortunate run-in with my backstock. Alone in my room with the full bottle of 7-Up beckoning, I soon had it nestled in my embrace – all 2 liters of it and a straw – holding on to the green plastic treasure like a mesmerized raccoon. And sip, sip, it soon became what I can only describe as an all-in-one-sitting binge of the total contents of it while I watched TV. So, even through the full sugar-induced high, I knew that my in-room kiddy snack bar’s days were at their end. Ah, sugar memories….
And so El Feybuk does its thang, connecting my present with my past – a big, jovial time capsule.
74. Seventy-four is the number of birthday wishes I received this year. Imagine coming home to an overstuffed mailbox in which your postman tried to cram 74 envelopes. Never underestimate the power of El Feybuk. I think those 74 greetings are our miracle of technology that we now take for granted. That is 148 typing hands or alternately maybe 148 texting thumbs, depending on the device you are using. And for that, a big, all out thank you.
Christmas time last year. Jimmy was being really cute saying how fun it would be for me to have a Saturday night out – girls' night – with one of my best friends that lives an hour away from Berkeley. Cool. Good idea. When I talked to her on the phone we were still deliberating: go out in San Francisco or the East Bay, or for me to go down to the peninsula where she is. We decided I would go down and then spend the night at her house. Her soft sell was so smooth and so without pressure that I never got wind that her one and only charge was to get me out of the house and for as long as possible so that my husband, daughter and her boyfriend could clean and sand and paint our bathroom – in just a few hours. As I was dilly-dallying with my outfit and my makeup and my hair, I try to picture Jimmy waiting across the street for me to leave with a bucket of paint in one hand and a couple 8-footers of baseboard in the other. This was my Christmas present, and the three worked hard through the night to surprise me on Sunday afternoon when I got back. They had to go so fast that some of the lines of the paint have their own sine wave rather than rigid edges, which when I see them in the morning sun, as I am getting ready for work, make me smile. I would much rather see them than any precision that would mask the fact that human, loving hands did this, and did it in a heck of a hurry, deep into the night, to surprise me the next day.
And here I have to say: choosing wall colors for an architect is a courageous thing to do. But…my daughter – who always shows a thrilling amount of resolve – texted Jimmy the color she had decided on and he, a la brava, went to the hardware store and bought the closest one resembling her picture. There are so many things about this project and this process of theirs that I love.
And that is how I ended up with a bathroom that is, not Cobalt, not Caribbean, not Cerulean, but
Feybuk Blue.
Kind Of Blue - written and performed by Miles Davis
www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZgeF3wS0xTI