In a diner somewhere, there’s a waiter that is serving 10-15 tables for lunch. And each one of the customers has a different story. One was late to meet a friend, and it’s the only time she’s ever been late. One customer has just finished his final round of chemo, and the diner food is his celebration. The waiter is flitting between these worlds, witnessing the essence of these stories.

When someone takes a photo of us, we are asked to smile. But at whom? It’s not the person taking the picture, so it must be the camera. The camera, the thing that sees our perfect moments, the ones that show us living our lives in an enviable way. Does the camera know that we are lying? Or is it stupid and oblivious to all the pain the lies behind a simple selfie?

+++ title = “11” date = 2018 +++ I’ve had this situation happen when I feel like I have a memory that is so perfectly wedged into my mind, only to watch a videotape of the memory later on and find out that what I remembered isn’t what actually happened. Or, I’ll have a memory is speckled with details from another memory. I’ll remember the correct sequence of events, but I’ll remember Bill making a particular comment when it was really Steve.

I saw a show the other night in DC. It was a band called the Night Game and according to Spotify, it’s my most played band of the last couple of years. They played a dynamite set, but there was something that I noticed: the set was a little over an hour long, and there was no encore. The encore, that little bit of showmanship that happens after the main set is over, after the band retreats to the backstage and the audience is cheering for them to return, usually contains a crowd pleaser, and it’s always served as a cool way to give the audience something extra.

Back when CDs were how people listened to music, there was a trend to include secret song at the end of the album (sometimes more). The track wouldn’t be listed on the back of the album’s case, so there was no way to really know if it was there. But sure enough, you’d pop in your CD and your CD player would tell you that there are 14 tracks instead of 13.