365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 59

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 28th, 2013

Rule #1:  Survival.

Jazz Hands is but one facet of the game.  This game, like any other, has lots of rules.  Some rules are meant to be strictly adhered to, some are meant to bend, and some are meant to be broken altogether.  Without rules, the saying goes, there is anarchy.  I disagree completely.

Anarchy is the defiance of establishment.  Establishment is a fancy word for structure and in a structure you must have rules.  Without rules, anarchy can not exist.  No.  It is much more appropriate to say that there is chaos in the absence of rules.  Chaos and anarchy are two very different animals.  While chaos is the complete absence of order, the bending and breaking of rules is the stuff of anarchy.  You must fully understand what is "in" and what is "out" of bounds before you venture off the playing field...a good anarchist must abide by the established rules and be well informed on their purpose before defiance can be managed.  John Joseph Lydon knew a thing or two about music before he became Johnny Rotten and formed a band named the Sex Pistols (it's been a while since our last music reference).

I have learned much about Jazz Hands, the history, current trends, its implementation in popular culture, etc.  I like to think that my deployment is an intentional deviation, a la anarchy, but it is mostly the result of poor execution and/or limited skill level...in other words, chaos.

Although I am not a big advocate of participation awards, there certainly is an acceptable way to lose.  While winning is great, striving to win is more important and the old cliché "it's how you play the game" is exceptionally relevant.  If you have a choice of winning the race outright or stopping to help a fallen opponent cross the finish line and choose the latter, you may not finish first, but you become a hero in the process.  Is this a form of anarchy?  Not necessarily in the Johnny Rotten spirit of anarchy, but there is an argument to be made. 

I don't suspect Jazz Hands will define anyone as a hero, but heroes emerge where you least expect, so you just never know.

Life is a game and sometimes playing the game right means taking a ball to the face...but play the game on your own terms and accept the fact that at some point you will get hit in the face with a baseball, basketball, football, volleyball, soccer ball or hell, let's throw beach ball in there for good measure.

Always play to win, but don't let finishing first stand in the way of victory...and always remember rule #1:  Survival.

Today's Jazz Hands were deployed chaotically.  Day fifty-nine complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 58

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 27th, 2013

Jazz Hands and I go back for quite some time.  Way before my awareness of Jazz Hands even existed.  It was right under my nose for years, more than a decade even but the influence was no doubt felt.  Living in the shadow of Jazz Hands for so long has prepared me for this arduous task of not only displaying my own version of hand jazzing every single day for three hundred and sixty five days, but also to write about the long journey of Jazz Hands enlightenment and the many experiences, lessons and adventures that are an inevitable byproduct of said journey (we went over the laws of unintended consequences, right?).

I suppose that it is not quite accurate to say that I lived in the shadows of Jazz Hands.  I basked in the glow of triumphant Jazz Hands, is more like it.  I owe a debt of gratitude for the opportunity to absorb the hand jazziness for such a long period of time, for the gift of His jazzing hands I enjoy today and hope that I continue to be worthy of them for a long time to come.

And all this time I assumed He was more of a blues guy.  A little rock n' roll, maybe.

Today's Jazz Hands were inspired and dedicated to my blue friend who has been hand jazzing me since 1999 without me realizing it.

Day fifty-eight complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 57

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 26th, 2013

You may think it is crazy that the Mitch voice spoke to me today.

Mitch almost NEVER speaks to me on Tuesdays, or maybe he speaks but I'm just not receptive to what he has to say on Tuesdays.  Inspiration is a difficult asset to come by on Tuesdays, I don't believe in portals on Tuesdays and I don't believe in time travel or parallel universes on Tuesdays.  Let me put that another way.  On Tuesdays, I do not believe in portals, time travel, parallel universes, unicorns or voices of dead comedians.  It is not that I don't think they are possible on Tuesdays.  It's that on Tuesdays I don't believe they have, do or ever will exist.

I never see Pops on Tuesdays as a matter of fact, and I never see deer on Tuesdays, which seems fairly random in and of itself, but by now you must know how I feel about randomness, Tuesdays or not.

I haven't seen any deer regardless of the day of the week in quite some time actually.  Mitch says to me, seemingly out of the blue, that maybe what I need is to see deer.  I thought it a strange thing to say, but on second thought it made a good deal of sense.  Seeing deer is a very enjoyable experience and often times a great source of inspiration for me.  Approximately twenty minutes after Mitch suggests that seeing deer may improve my state of mind I spot a couple of them grazing next to the road during my evening commute.  Although they are not doing anything special or out of the ordinary, they are amazing creatures and immediately lift my spirits.  Mitch says "I told you so" and then promptly goes away, that smug son of a bitch.

Did Mitch somehow arrange this to happen, merely look ahead in time and see that it was going to occur, or was his mentioning deer twenty minutes prior to me seeing deer utter coincidence?  I don't believe in coincidences on Tuesdays (a.k.a. On Tuesdays, I do not believe in coincidences), so we can rule that possibility completely out.

I certainly don't believe in Jazz Hands on Tuesdays, but Mitch says that idle hands do the devils work, therefor Jazz Hands are in order.  He didn't really say that.  I'm full of shit on Tuesdays.

Today's Jazz Hands are done in lieu of evil wrong doing.

Day fifty-seven complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 56

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 25th, 2013

When youth and blood were warmer...

When we moved into this house a few years ago there was an awe inspiring tree, centrally located in the back yard bearing hundreds of plump, juicy limes.  The peel on every piece of fruit was a dense and deep shade of green and if you gashed the surface with your fingernail you'd smell intense citrus for the rest of the afternoon.  The sun used to shine through the thick canopy and shower rays upon the lime tree's branches and as a thank you, the tree became lush and thick and provided a bounty of fruit worthy of a fairy tale.  

But like all fairy tales there is darkness lurking just under the surface.  If you're not careful, this tree also produces long, sharp thorns.  Picking ripe fruit is almost always accompanied by wiping blood from your hands.  

And like all fairy tales, the last two words that carry as much weight as any harvested bushel of fruit are printed purposefully, plainly and painfully at the conclusion of the story to serve as a reminder of our eventual, inevitable outcome.  Limitation is nature's sweetener, though.

But being spent, the worse, and worst, time still succeed the former.

Keeping in mind that this blog has a definitive, fixed expiration date, today's Jazz Hands are a brief, routine defying breath of fresh air, albeit a tad cliché.

Day fifty-six complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 55

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 24th, 2013

There are many intersections that you will come to in life that will serve as some sort of a portal.  It may not be Kennedy Blvd. and Dale Mabry, and you may not recognize them as intersections when you are there.  But they exist and you will travel through them and your life will be forever changed as a result.

The tricky details of time travel (based on experience) are as follows:  no matter how fast you drive, or run, or fast walk if that's your thing, the past moves faster than you and it will definitely catch up, probably more rapidly than you hope.  Karma is just like food poisoning and karma is not make believe, as much as that egg salad sandwich you ate for lunch yesterday was not make believe.  

The question is this...can elder Pops warn younger Pops about the mistakes he is making?  Are either aware that the guy standing across from him is the same man, just many years apart?  My guess is no.  Young Pops has already made decisions in life that lead to Elder Pops...there's no changing what's been done.  There is no going back.

It is entirely possible that Jazz Hands is a portal of sorts.  Step through it and see where it leads...We are just under two months complete and we still have a long journey ahead.  

Thank you for reading.  Thank you for participating.  Thank you for your donations (working on that 30 million).

Today's Jazz Hands were competitive, but ultimately fell just short due to fatigue.  The effort was worthy of championship, though.  

Day fifty-five complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 54

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 23rd, 2013

The intersection of Kennedy Blvd. and Dale Mabry is where Pops calls home.  It's a modest, one milk crate home, but home nonetheless.

The intersection of Kennedy Blvd. and Dale Mabry is also a portal.  It's a portal in more than one way, but a portal nonetheless.

One way that it is a portal is that it seems to thoroughly zap out all of the Jazz Hands energy by crossing through the threshold.  Additionally, it is a time portal.  Maybe the two are related but there is no way of knowing for sure.  Perhaps electro-magnetic fields are energy suckers.  That seems to make a little bit of sense, in a nerdy physics way.  But I'm not a physics nerd, so we'll just leave that question for Stephen Hawking and wait for his reply.  I think he has a gmail account, I'll give it a shot.

I can tell you one thing for sure.  It is a rare occasion that I do not get stopped by a red light at the intersection of Kennedy Blvd. and Dale Mabry.  Almost always, I'm stopped at that red light.  And it's a long red light.  Really-long-red-light.

This past week I was cursed with three green lights, three days in a row.  Cursed because it means I will pass through the energy sucking electro-magnetic field sooner, destroying most of my inspiration in one fell swoop.  The other two days were red.

This week I crossed paths with my old friend Pops three times.  Each time, my journey through the portal was expedited with a green light.  Each of those three times, I watched Pops go by in a whir.  Each of those three times I wonder if Pops is quick enough to spot the flying bag of Combos being tossed to him from a car traveling approximately forty miles per hour and also be nimble enough to catch it before said bag causes serious bodily harm.  

Death by Combos...and not in the normal "death by Combos" way either.

I side with caution and keep the bag of Combos at my side for a red light day.  The two days I am stopped by a red light, my old friend Pops is replaced by the younger version, who usually resides on the opposite side of the intersection.  Old Pops south side.  Young Pops north side.  Young Pops is not quite as friendly and it seems that much time must pass before he is ready to receive the gift of Combos for he is not wise enough to understand the greatness of fake cheese squeezed into hollowed out, salty pretzel bits.  Old Pops as evidence, he'll get there some day.

Time portals are fairly tricky and are somewhat of a mindfuck.  Excuse the expression, but there is no other word in the English vocabulary that comes even close to an appropriate expression for time portals.

It's possible that it is not really time travel, but another dimension interacting with our own, and the only reason I think that may be viable is because I've seen old Pops south side and young Pops north side on the same day once...this seems to suggest the probability of dimensions interacting, and this particular intersection, Kennedy Blvd. and Dale Mabry, is a place with a high frequency of dimensional interactions, where dopplegangers can co-exist.  

I believe the dimension where south side Old Pops resides is the one that is Hand Jazzier.

Today's Jazz Hands are multi-dimentionally complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 53

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 22nd, 2013

Can you think of any expressions in the English language that have two separate expressions for the same thing, besides thunder and lightning? And don't give me that baloney that they are two separate things, it's a bad argument.  One is the thing you see, one is the sound that thing makes...If a train goes by, you hear a train.  If the wind blows, you hear the wind blowing, but you don't say that you see the wind and hear the blowing.  If lightning strikes, you're going to tell me that you did NOT hear lightning?  I said it once I'll say it again...it's baloney.

Can you think of a word that rhymes with orange, purple or silver?  Can you think of a word NOT representing a color that does not have a rhyming counterpart?

Why is "nonetheless" one word?

Can you explain how we have two spellings for the same word, meaning the exact same thing and while one is more common, they are both correct?  And I'm not talking about the English vs. American English version when you add the letter "u" to color.  You have "paid" attention or you have "payed" attention.  Both right.  That's nonsense.

Can you logically explain why adding "in" to the word "valid" makes it opposite, yet adding "in" to "valuable" makes it even more so?  

Can you think of a good reason to do Jazz Hands today?

I hate it when Mitch is right.

Day fifty-three spitefully complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 52

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 21st, 2013

Of the two "people" I talk to the most, Family Dog is by far the better listener and I can tell by the look in his eyes and the wag of his tail that he agrees with just about everything I say and enjoys our discussions through and through.  Family Dog is ecstatic about Jazz Hands, the result of constant positive reinforcement during his evening escapades.

Of the two people I talk to the most, the Mitch voice inside my head is definitely the talker.  He's argumentative, almost always plays devil's advocate, and of course is the voice of a dead comedian.

Sometimes I can not get him to shut the hell up.

There was a short list of applicants for the voice gig, but Mitch ultimately won.  Although Bill Murray plays a convincing dead guy on film, at last check he is still alive.  What I really appreciate about the Mitch Hedberg point of view is the ability to see one situation from many different angles.  That sort of perspective is invaluable when it comes to inner dialogue and is an objectivity that Bill Murray could not possibly offer me, dead or alive.

Truth is there was not an audition.  Mitch found me, not the other way around.

Mitch and I are on the level about some things.  He believes in ghosts (of course he would), time travel, echoes, String/M Theory (aka "The Unified Theory"), and that everything is connected in a way that eliminates the possibility of randomness.  And also ducks.

But mostly we disagree.

Mitch argues that Jazz Hands, the metaphor, is lost on most.  That Jazz Hands, the literal, physical act of shaking the hands about, is mostly pathetic and the daily bombardment is tedious at best, especially if Jazz Hands, the metaphor, is lost on most.

Mitch argues that this blog is self-indulgent.  This from the king of self-indulgence, himself...and you wonder why we argue.

Mitch seems to think that seeing examples of Jazz Hands virtually everywhere in every day life is due to a psychological disorder, related to my subconscious Jazz Hands deployments, again, all due to my total immersion.

I can not disagree more.  Whether we want to admit it or not, Jazz Hands is all around us, just look around and you'll see for yourself...and sometimes it is fun to deploy the hand jazzing randomly in situations that may or may not be noticed by the intended recipient(s).  It's an inside joke for one...it would be for two, but Mitch just isn't on board (yet).

Today's Jazz Hands were done despite Mitch's disapproval.  Day fifty-two complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 51

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 20th, 2013

I tell myself that I am working Jazz Hands into every day life, seemingly right under the noses of the unaware.  The voice in my head (which does not utilize contractions and sounds a lot like Mitch Hedberg as a result) is convinced that it is a subconscious act, due to my total hand jazzing immersion.

We argue about some strange things, Mitch and I...I usually lose.  But I'm standing my ground here.

I hand jazzed the wife.  I hand jazzed the neighbor as we crossed paths dropping kids off at school.  I even hand jazzed a co-worker.  Every instance was subtle and none of them saw it, or at least they pretended not to notice.

Day fifty-one's multiple, subtle, unnoticed, completely intentional Jazz Hands complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 50

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 19th, 2013

Today I am merely going to update our audience statistical data as we now have readers in fourteen countries, spanning four different continents, all detailed below.

North America: USA, Canada
Europe: Germany, Spain, Croatia, England, Italy
South America: Brazil, Colombia
Asia: Kazakhstan, Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Nepal

As far as the current statistical data goes, there is no way to know for sure if all of our readers have both arms and hands, or if some have one arm with one hand, two arms but only one hand, or are at a distinct height advantage.  Vertically challenged people either like to be called "midgets" or "dwarfs" depending on the proportion of their head in relationship to the rest of their body.  To this day I am still confused on the matter.  Are the cute ones with the oversized heads midgets or dwarfs?  Is it ever politically correct to call one an elf?  Either way, I'm certain that their particular brand of hand jazzing is adorable.  If any of you readers out there know a midget, or dwarf, big head or not, or have access to one, please coax them into doing Jazz Hand(s) and send the footage to me.  I can not make any promises, but your efforts could potentially be rewarded with the granting of several wishes, depending on how the midget you've found responds to the video taping.

Today I hand jazzed Brazilian, which looks considerably close to Malaysian which looks similar to Canadian which is very close to German which is identical to American which is nowhere near as cute as Midget-American.

Day fifty complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 49

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 18th, 2013

I'm learning more and more every day that Jazz Hands is for anyone regardless of nationality, language, size, shape, color, gender, age, religion, or political affiliation.  Jazz Hands knows no bounds, does not discriminate, and is as unassuming as it is all encompassing.  

Unless you don't have any arms.  

No armed people can not do Jazz Hands, which is unfortunate.  If you do not have any arms, you may only imagine yourself doing Jazz Hands, hand jazz in your dreams, or get bionic arms but that's probably quite expensive. 

On the other hand, while having only one arm makes hand jazzing a challenge, it is not completely out of the question.  The Jazz Hands deployed by one armed people is a compromised, slightly impaired version (by slight I mean exactly 50%)...but we can't use the term "impaired" in this instance because it's insensitive for one, and also because we already have something else called "Impaired Jazz Hands" which you can refer back to in our glossary of Jazz Hands terms, published on day thirty-six for details.

If you only have one arm, "Jazz Hands" become "Jazz Hand" and I sincerely apologize for ALWAYS referring to Jazz Hands in the plural form.  I intend no disrespect to one armed hand jazzers, of course.  

Your 50% is 100% better than 0%.  

Day forty-nine 100% complete.  

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 48

SUNDAY, FEBRUARY 17th, 2013

I know a man that is very bright and one of the nicest humans, possibly of all time.  I am lucky to call him a friend and it would not be a stretch to consider him a modern day superhero. When he disclosed to me that "theater types" don't run around doing Jazz Hands all of the time, I was, to say the least, surprised.  This friend is a family man, is a very involved father and just recently pitched in to help put on the production of a play with his daughter. 

Were you aware that Oliver has zero Jazz Hands sequences in it?  That's a bunch of nonsense.

At any rate, during intermission our hero had the entire company of young actors participate in a group jazz handing to get them geared up and jazzercised for the second act.  Our hero reported the event back to me and I am proud to forward the development back on to you...certainly worth sharing.

It isn't exactly ALL the children of the world raising their Jazz Hands to the sky and singing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.  But it's a step in the right direction...a big thanks go to our hero for spreading the wealth of Jazz Hands and also for making my wish, at least in part, come true.

Now about the 30 million tax free dollars...

Day forty-eight complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 47

SATURDAY, FEBRUARY 16th, 2013

If I had one wish I could wish, it would be that all the children raise their Jazz Hands to the sky and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.

If I had two wishes I could make, the first would be for all the children of the world to raise their Jazz Hands to the sky and sing in the spirit of harmony and peace.  And the second would be for 30 million dollars a month to be given to me, tax-free.

You know, if I had three wishes I could make, the first, of course, would be for all the children of world to get together and do Jazz Hands together, the second would be for the 30 million dollars every month to me, and the third would be for all encompassing power over every living being in the entire universe.

And if I had four wishes that I could make, the first would be the crap about the hand jazzing kids...definitely...the second would be for the 30 million, the third would be for all the power, and the fourth would be to set aside one month each year to have an extended 31-day orgasm.

Wait a minute, maybe the sex thing should be the first wish, so if I made that the first wish, because it could all go boom tomorrow, then what do you got, y'know?  No, no, the kids, the kids singing and jazz handing would be great, that would be nice.  But wait a minute, who am I kidding?  They're not going to be able to get all those kids together.  I mean, the logistics of the thing is impossible, more trouble than it's worth!  So, we reorganize.  

First, the sex thing.  We go with that.  Second, the money.  No, we go with the power second, then the money.  And then the kids.  Oh wait...I forgot about revenge against my enemies.  I need revenge against all my enemies, they should die like pigs in hell.  That would be my fourth wish.  And, of course, my fifth wish would be for all the children of the world to do Jazz Hands and sing together in the spirit of harmony and peace.

Many of you will recognize the above from a SNL sketch from years ago, performed by the one and only Steve Martin, and slightly altered by me...It's Saturday after all, and since my wishes pretty well coincide fairly directly with Mr. Martin's, I thought it appropriate...plus there is absolutely no way I could have written it better than the master.  My sixth and final wish is to have a fraction of the humor that Steve Martin has.  

If there are readers that are new to the above material...it's about time you were brought up to speed.  

Day forty-seven plagiarized and complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 46

FRIDAY, FEBRUARY 15th, 2013

Jazz Hands teaches us how to examine life.  To observe and absorb the little things that surround us each and every day.  Jazz Hands gives us levity and the ability to time travel and to destroy and to create and to connect dots where none existed before and to write run on sentences.

It gives us a fighting chance in this world of inherently vain, meaningless futility...where the lives of both wise and foolish men end in death.

That was some deep bull kaka right there.

Still with me?  Good.

Day twenty-three we looked at things under a microscope to get a deeper meaning which I thought to be quite fun.  Today we will look at Jazz Hands from the widest view down to the molecular level and really find out what's going on.  This will prove two things.  First it will prove without doubt that Jazz Hands is more than anyone has ever thought possible.  Second it will show that there is no randomness. Take a look at the universe and attempt to argue otherwise.  Seriously, look.  It's as expansive as it is elegantly connected in every way imaginable.

Zoom in a wee bit and we find our Milky Way galaxy.  Keep in mind that the Milky Way is but a speck of dust in the vastness of the universe...

Closer still, the Big Dipper is quite familiar to all of us as we've all spent countless nights gazing at the stars, wondering how long it will take the dog to do his business so we can get back inside.

Look at this same image from a new perspective, you get Ursa Major, which is the shape of a big bear. Viewing the same thing from different angles can play a crucial role in almost every facet of life.

Zoom in close to the tip of the big bear's tail and the very end of the Big Dipper's handle, we find the star Alkaid, a brilliant bright star in its own right..."Alkaid" means "leader" which is ironic considering the location on Ursa Major's hind side.

Continue further onto the surface of Alkaid, we see a new world emerge before our eyes (quite the zoom lens on my smart phone, yes?  There's an app for that, you should check it out).  Breathtaking, is it not?

Just a tad closer, you will find this little fella swimming around the lake we found on Alkaid's surface.  Almost hard to believe...but zoom lenses do not lie.

Trust me we're going somewhere with this...zoom into the feathers on the back of this duck and you find...you guessed it (you did guess we'd find heaven there, didn't you?) heaven!

And when you finally ascend that Staircase, you get to the smallest elements ever to be found...that's not to suggest insignificance of course.  They are, after all, the building blocks of existence...and I found them with the zoom lens on my new smart phone.  Snorks.  And they're doing Jazz Hands.  How perfect.

Who knew we'd find Snorks doing Jazz Hands in Heaven on the back of a duck that we found swimming in a pond on the tail of a bear?  The universe is expansive and mysterious.  But one thing is for certain...Jazz Hands is at the root of it all.

Day forty-six complete.

PS:  Pops was his old self, back in his favorite spot today...glad to be back in the modern era.  Time travel is exhausting.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 45

THURSDAY, FEBRUARY 14th, 2013 (A Special Valentine's Day Edition!)

As I approach the red light at the upcoming intersection I can see him standing there in the median.  I do not recognize the young man at all, bouncing from car to car raking in handouts, building up his resistance to humility.  Disconnecting from humanity.

I roll down my window and ask the young man where "Pops" is at today.

Uninterested in answering, he turns to walk away, stops, looks back at me and mumbles something I don't quite understand, adjusts his red, relatively new ball cap and moves on.

Today, if for only a brief moment, I travelled through time.  It seems unlikely but one must not argue with logic.

***

Today's Jazz Hands is mostly cloudy with periods of rain, possibly heavy at times. This blog entry was brought to you in part by conjecture.

Oh, and since it's Valentines Day, here's a nice photo of our mascot with his girlfriend:

Be Mine!!!

And here'a a nice photo of a duck:

Nice photo of duck.

Day forty-five complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 44

WEDNESDAY, FEBRUARY 13th, 2013

Amazingness has occurred and you are about to read about it...

As I approach the red light at the upcoming intersection I can see him standing there in the median, slouched over, rummaging through an old bag.  I recognize the man immediately with his short, unkept white beard contrasting black skin and an old, worn out, red baseball cap pulled down tight.

Coming to a halt, I roll down my window and wave him over but I receive no response, as he is singularly focused on the contents of his downtrodden bag, possibly most of his personal belongings within.  I call out "POPS!" and his head snaps up.  I wave him over again, this time he obliges, dutifully.  

"How do you know my name?"  Pops asks me with a wide, genuine smile exposing a gold tooth.  I barely make out the words as he is quite difficult to understand.  

Based only on my limited observation, people of the street seem fairly numb to their humiliation, immune to their connection to humanity, and would just assume move on quickly after snatching whatever it is you are offering them.  

Pops could not care less about acquiring money from me today.  I told him that I recall the name from a tag that he had worn a while back and when I questioned his whereabouts for the past month, voicing concern for his well-being, he beamed brightly and began to answer with words I could not decipher.

To hear someone call him by name was worth much more than a bag of Combos, apparently.  I thought he wanted to give me a hug.  He did not, for the record.

I did not explain to him why he disappeared or why he suddenly re-emerged, nor did I mention that his fate can be altered by the words I write about him.  You and I understand how plausible that is, but to Pops, that would likely sound ridiculous.  I did not have the time to explain that there is no other logical explanation for these occurrences.  

Again due to our limited time, I fail to mention Jazz Hands as I had promised to.  Perhaps tomorrow I will address the hand jazzing and see if he wants to play along.  It should be enough that today Pops is slightly less immune to his humanity.  I can do Jazz Hands to that...in private, of course.

Day forty-four complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 43

TUESDAY, FEBRUARY 12th, 2013

It seems we have some Italians or at least one enthusiastic Italian, interested in a quick restated purpose...So today's blogging is to welcome our new friend(s), and get them up to speed, along with anyone else that needs a quick refresh...also, please feel free to go back to the original post and start from the beginning for the thorough experience...otherwise, welcome aboard (CIAO!).

RESTATED PURPOSE:

I have aspirations of being a world renowned jazz dancer and am dedicating one year of my life to explore one small facet of the genre, Jazz Hands.  Only then will I feel comfortable enough to expand into more traditional jazz dancing techniques.

Either that or I held a "Pick Kyle's 2013 New Year's Resolution" contest, and the winning entry (by virtue of vote) was for me to deploy Jazz Hands every single day for the entire year, accompanied by regular updates on the progress of said resolution, which has turned into this here blog.

Whichever seems more viable.

If you need a more complete understanding of what Jazz Hands is exactly, please turn your attention to the most current, credible source for modern terminology, "The Urban Dictionary."

The Urban Dictionary has three, clearly defined variables for Jazz Hands, all of which seem quite plausible.

1. A cabaret-style move, popularized by the musical "Fosse".  Now used, usually ironically to express excitement, glee, razzle dazzle, etc.  

The move is performed by tilting the head slightly, shimmering the hands with fingers splayed either side of the face and crying "jazz hands!" with an enthusiastic smile.  Also *JAZZ HANDS!!!* used as an expressive punctuation on blogs and bulletin boards.

2. The act of waving one's hands in the air in an erratic manner in response to an emotional song or situation.  Similar to spirit fingers except that the entire hand and, occasionally the arms, are utilized.

3. When a persons hands shake uncontrollably from alcohol withdraw. 

Razzle Dazzle.  I like that.  Here's hoping you are dazzled with razzle and that you come back for more.  Today's actual hand jazzing was done ironically.  Day forty-three complete.

365 Days of Jazz Hands - Day 42

MONDAY, FEBRUARY 11th, 2013

Perhaps it was there before I posted the short story yesterday, but I had not noticed the new growth on the very top of the lime tree that resides in the back yard.  Today there are definitely signs of life where there were none prior.

On the other hand, no signs of Pops during the morning commute.  It is entirely possible that he finds himself in better spirits today and is on the road to recovery (no pun intended) and will make his appearance soon.  After all, the lime tree did not become lush with green over night.  These double negatives don't not take time.

Onto actual Jazz Hands matters:  Yesterday evening, when informed that there would be a wait at a local restaurant, I asked the hostess to announce our party of eight as "Jazz Hands" once seating became available.  The request garnered almost no reaction save for Wife's eye roll and when it came time to be seated, the electronic device we had in our possession buzzed and vibrated without an accompanying announcement by the wait staff.  The stunt was a disaster at almost every level, although the food was terrific.

Once home and tuned into a popular music awards show that goes out of its way to celebrate mediocrity, I take Family Dog out to escapade.  While the nominations for "Most Boring Song of The Year" are being announced, Family Dog deploys and I reward him with Jazz Hands accordingly.  He looks as proud as ever as we head back in to wrap up our weekend with a bit more commercialized punishment.  Day forty-two complete.