Up Your Consciousness …by Greg Tamblyn

Since edible meals (and even snacks!) on flights are a distant, gut-rumbling memory, it’s critical for the health and well-being of your own personal, frequent-traveling self to know where to find decent food in an airport. And in the all-too-common-and-unhappy event that you’re stuck on the tarmac for three hours (the new limit - are you kidding me?), and you’re out of beef jerky, you know the friendly sky folks won’t be pulling out the stored rations to feed you, because there aren’t any. So you need to know where to fill up first. Preferably with food you might actually enjoy.

No national chains allowed here, just local and regional specialties. I’ll think of some more in a couple hours when I get hungry, but for now here are my favorite places to eat, pre-flight or on a layover, in no particular order:

1. Dickey’s Barbeque at DFW, several outlets. Why? Because it’s the closest you can come to Kansas City* barbecue in an airport. It’s not the best barbecue by a long shot, but for an airport it’s reasonably good. And I like their green bean side dish, cooked with bacon and potatoes.

*Here in Kansas City we disagree on which local establishment has the best overall barbeque, because we have so many good ones. My favorite has always been Arthur Bryants — which Calvin Trillin of The New Yorker called “the best restaurant in the world” — but the one at the airport is only so-so. It’s probably as good as Dickey’s but I never eat at my own airport, so I’m not counting it.

2. The French restaurant in Concourse B at Denver*. You can sit down, away from the bustle, and enjoy real French cooking. The onion soup is good, and I had a pretty good coq-au-vin there too. It’s a classic French dish of roasted chicken cooked in red wine with potatoes. When done right, it’s one of my favorite meals ever.

* The Denver airport is practically halfway to Canada from Denver. It’s miles from anywhere, surrounded by nothing but vacant, flat land. Why then did they deem it necessary to put the rental cars miles away in another empty wasteland? They could have just as easily put them next to the terminal and saved everybody a 15 minute bus ride. Somebody got paid off.

3. The Mexican place in Tucson. Can’t remember the name right now. The same family has been in the business for 75 years. The Mexican food is quite good, but even better is the view out the window of the adjacent air base, where you can watch stealth fighters taking off and landing. Those are some cool looking planes.

4. The food court at JFK. All kinds of international dishes you don’t normally see anywhere else. On a recent layover I tanked up at the Indian food counter. As good as a lot of non-airport Indian restaurants I’ve been to.

More coming when I think of them. So, what have I missed?

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Analog Brain In A Digital World has just been reviewed - along with a concert - on OpEdNews, one of the top news sites in the world.

Can you do me a favor? Would you click through to the article? The more people that click through, the higher its ranking and the longer it stays up. (Heck, you might even want to read it….it’s a good review.) This should get some extra buzz going about the new CD. My new motto: “Let’s Go Viral! Think what a funny world it would be if everyone caught a healthy dose of music and laughter.” Thanks.

(If you like the article and want to forward the link to your friends, well, double thank you very much.)

OpEdNews.com is one of the top media sites in the U.S. with 500,000 - 800,000 unique visitors a month, from 200 countries, with over 40 million hits and over two million page views monthly. It reaches more traffic than all but the 30 largest daily newspapers in the U.S.

The reviewer, Meryl Ann Butler, has published over 90 articles on OpEdNews. Most have been headlined and many have reached #1 or #2 on the site. So hopefully, with your help, we can take this one to #1.

Please do check out the review. Every click helps! I really appreciate it:

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Thanks again for your prolific, often hilarious entries in the How To Know When You Have An Analog Brain t-shirt contest. Here are some of the contenders:

• Hard Drive: A road trip with Dad
• Flash Drive: Operating a vehicle while naked
• Skype: Something Uncle Larry caught and brought home for dinner
• MegaHertz: What Wally threatened to do to The Beaver
• Memory Stick: What the old man spanked us with
• Live Streaming: Fly fishing
• Search Engine: Looking for the dipstick
• iTunes: What I does when my guitar sounds a little off
• Amazon.com: Website run by strong women
• Scroll Bar: Tavern near the Dead Sea
• Modem: What I did to de lawns
• URL: the guy the Dixie Chicks say, “’s gotta die”
• Gigabyte: the food backstage at a concert
• Picasa: A Mexican bathroom
• Motherboard: Daddy ain’t keeping her entertained

Honorable mention, but not technically eligible for the contest: a new site being jointly produced by YouTube, Twitter and FaceBook: YouTwitFace.

And the winner, based solely on the fact that it made me chuckle and appeals to my own personal sense of fun, submitted by Janet Ackerman Beck, who wins a free t-shirt:

• Disc Space: Room enough to play frisbee!

T-SHIRT NOTE:

Thanks for your votes and suggestions on color and style. The white-on-black was the runaway vote getter (two to one) over black-on-white or any other color. I also received dozens of suggestions and preferences from you ladies about other options: cap sleeves, long sleeves, 3/4 sleeves, v-neck, scoop neck, baby doll, all kinds of colors, imprint on the back “so people are not looking at my breasts,” imprint on the front “so people ARE looking at my breasts,” etc.

Whew. This was wildly amusing, but head-spinningly complicated. I got reminded how much easier it is to be a man in the fashion department. And since I have no interest in going into the t-shirt business long-term, decided to honor the voting, emulating Henry Ford and the Model T: you can have any color you want, as long as it’s black!

You can view the t-shirts on the same page as the new CD.

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I’d been looking for the recording of Steve Winwood singing “Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out” for a long time. My sister-in-law Linda found me an audio track and, unbelievably, a VIDEO.

It’s mid-1960s, British Invasion, Spencer Davis Group, and this teenage Winwood gives me chills. So cool. Enjoy.

(It’s an 8mb Quicktime file, so you’ll need Quicktime. Give it a few seconds to load….)

Nobody Loves You When You’re Down And Out

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Every once in awhile science validates those millions of funding dollars with a revelation which, while not immediately practical — like, say, a cure for the common colonoscopy — is nonetheless worth its endowment in mindless fantasy.

In case you missed it, “60 Minutes” recently aired a story about a couple of paleontologists who have blown the wings off contemporary scientific dogma by discovering a way to recover soft tissue from the bones of dinosaurs. This was supposed to be more impossible than getting Republicans and Democrats to agree on health care reform. In addition, they’ve actually uncovered the first T-Rex nests, and even cracked open the eggs. (Reportedly, subsequent efforts to make the first dinosaur omelet met with mixed success. It was described as “kind of chewy, and better with Tabasco.”)

More spectacular by far is they seem certain that within five years we’ll be able to switch off the “bird” genes of a chicken, activate the older “dinosaur” genes, and produce a “dino-chicken.” It will be like a mini T-Rex, with teeth, a long tail, and scary little arms instead of wings.

Personally, I can’t wait. Will they be cute little critters? Or savage little Chucky’s of the chicken world? If so, you know it’s only a matter of time before someone leaves the lab door open and they’re unleashed on the countryside. In terms of lifestyle change, this could be right up there with Snuggies. The mind reels with possibilities:

• Colonel Sanders in a pith helmet and safari jacket: “Finger lickin’ dino-chicken!”
• Helpless farm animals devoured by sly, predator chickens who lure them into the hen house with decoy “peeps.”
• Halliburton, subsidized by the US Department of Agriculture, makes a fortune selling body armor to farmers.
• Free-range chickens? Only in your nightmares.
• The animated sequel to “Chicken Run” is bloody. Very bloody.
• Why did the chicken cross the road? To eat your cow.
• Breeders of guard-chickens: “Cheaper than Dobermans!”
• Trained squads of the little monsters unleashed on the Taliban by the Pentagon.
• No more chicken insults. “Did you see Corporal Yankovic single-handedly take out that Al Qaeda nest? He’s a total chicken!”
• “The Chicken Whisperer” becomes a smash hit on TV, until the unfortunate host loses some appendages.
• China adopts the Dino-Chicken as its national symbol. (Shortly afterward, during a display of National Pride, the National Symbol gets loose and attacks an underage olympic gymnast during her floor exercise.)
• What came first, the chicken or the egg? Only Monsanto knows for sure.
• Chicken hunting season becomes a state holiday in all U.S. southern states.
• Dick Cheney and Sarah Palin, sponsored by the NRA, take ceremonial first shots at a flock of the little raptors. Dick accidentally shoots Sarah in the tush, but doesn’t have time to get off another round. He is attacked and, well….I’m sure you can guess the rest.

© 2010 Greg Tamblyn

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Looking for the best TV, digital camera, netbook for yourself or a friend? Not sure where to start? Overwhelmed by variety and tech terms?

For all you Analog Brain in a Digital World types (like myself), who get bewildered by the range and number of choices out there, here’s a helpful site to save you LOADS of time and cut through the clutter. You take a short quiz about what you’re looking for (preferences, price range, etc.) and you’ll get matched up with a short list of products that best match what you’re looking for.

It’s not only easy, it’s kinda fun. It’s called Measy.

Happy shopping!

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Many years ago John Denver introduced Tina Turner at the Grammys this way:

“She’s the woman God put on earth to show other women how to dance in high heels.”

This has nothing to do with high heels, dancing, Tina Turner, or John Denver, but I thought about his line last night when I learned about the death of Nien Cheng. In my mind, she is one of the people God put on earth to show us how to live with strength, dignity, and grace when life is hard.

If you’ve heard my song “Stand Like Mountain, Move Like Water,” you know a bit of her story. She was living in Shanghai in the ’60s during Mao’s Cultural Revolution. She was dragged out of her home and thrown into prison, for being an educated woman. She endured extreme hardship, deprivation, and solitary confinement for nearly seven years until the political climate changed and she was released. Eventually she made her way to this country, wrote a best seller, and was a frequent guest at The White House.

Her book is a riveting account of her life, how she survived the brutality of prison, and emerged from all of the torment in some ways even stronger than before.

I got to know Nien Cheng and even visit her a few times, courtesy of my friend Brian Luke Seaward. She became one of my heroes. Of course there are other such people, and we all have ones we look up to. When we read about their creativity, intelligence, dignity, strength, and grace surviving difficult times, it makes us stronger. It gives us hope.

I’m not one of the people who buys into the notion that life is supposed to be easy, that life should be glorious and wonderful all the time. I prefer the M. Scott Peck philosophy, expressed in The Road Less Traveled: if you start from the premise that life isn’t supposed to be easy, everything makes more sense.

Challenges are what make us stronger. They inspire and stimulate our innate abilities and resources. If we want to build up our bodies, we have to stress our muscles in order for them to grow stronger. We can’t do it by lifting air. We have to put some weight on the bar.

Our life muscles work the same way. A bit of stress (hopefully) kick starts our creativity, strength, resourcefulness, intelligence. Even our grace and dignity. In responding to challenges with determination and creativity, we become stronger in every way. This is how we evolve, both as a person and as a soul.

Nien Cheng was 94 years old. Her story is riveting, empowering, and in the end, hopeful. If you’re experiencing any difficulty in your life at the moment, I humbly suggest to pay attention to what stories you are paying attention to.

If you haven’t already, I sincerely encourage you to read her book, Life And Death In Shanghai.

* You can read a bit more about Nien Cheng and the unlikely series of events that led to writing the song about her (as well as many other empowering and funny true stories), in my book Atilla The Gate Agent: Travel Tales and Life Lessons From A Musical Laf-ologist.

* The song “Stand Like Mountain, Move Like Water” was nominated for a Posi Award, It’s on my CD Art From The Heart. You can listen to part of it here.

© 2009 Greg Tamblyn

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Analog Brain In A Digital World on a t-shirt just strikes me as amusing. And I can think of lots of people (my mom, for example) who would crack up if they got one as a gift. So I’m premiering t-shirts with my CD release. But as anybody who’s seen me in person knows, I have fashion disability. So I need to know what YOU like.

Black shirt with white print? White shirt with black print? Or do you prefer a color? Red, Blue, Green, Brown, Aqua, Teal, Rust, Chartreuse, Mauve, Ecru? (What the heck is ecru? Or mauve, for that matter…) Color costs more, but if most people prefer one particular color, I don’t mind splurging for the extra expense.

Also, do you like the image on the FRONT or the BACK?

We’ll have some available for all you t-shirt fashionistas. Please let me know what you think in the comments box below. Thanks!

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I brought my Baby Taylor guitar along for a cross-country flight to Oregon. It’s great to have around for practice because it’s small and fits overhead in the plane, no problem.

As I boarded United Airlines, a flight attendant surprised me by considerately offering to put my little guitar up front in the closet. I said sure, and thanked her.

During the flight, the pilot turned out to be one of those rare funny ones with a good sense of humor. He made a few in-flight jokes on the intercom, and I always appreciate that.

When we landed and I got to the exit door, I reminded the attendant about my guitar, and she turned to get it. When she came back and handed it to me, the pilot was standing there too, and said “Here’s your guitar. And it’s not broken, either, ’cause United doesn’t break guitars!” We both laughed.

Then he asked if it was a Taylor guitar, and I said it was, the same kind as in the (famous) video. And he said, “Man I’m glad we didn’t break that one.” Cracked me up again.

So United Airlines — despite a seat as hard as a wooden bench and legroom that would cramp a midget — won me over, at least for today. And all because of a nice gesture by the attendant, and a sense of humor from the pilot.

Isn’t this what we want from big business? A personal touch and a little self-effacing levity? It sure made a difference in my day.

For today at least, the skies were quite friendly.

* If you haven’t seen the video United Breaks Guitars, it’s a funny piece of writing, and a brilliant example of how to get the attention of a big corporation.

© 2009 Greg Tamblyn, Motivational Humorist and Guitar Lover

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You guys have been great! Thanks for voting for your favorite version of the title song, and entering your Analog Brain definitions for the t-shirt contest. Now I’d like to run some cover art by you and get your feedback.

Below is a short evolution of cover ideas. I thought it might be fun for you to see them. We started with some cartoons by my pal Bob Kroeker. I liked all of them in different ways, but they just didn’t seem to quite nail the feeling I was going for. Then I had a goofy idea for a photo cover, so my brother and I spent the day in my landlord’s kitchen taking pictures of yours truly yakking away on his ancient wall phone. (Only my landlord would have one of these phones that still works.)

My designer friend Rebecca Price put it all together in a playful illustration with lots of color.

The question now is where to put my name. So you’ll see three versions with the name in different fonts and places.

What do you think? Let me know in the comments box below.

Thanks!

Cartoon Cover 1 (Bob is really great at drawing “panic”):

Cartoon Cover 2 (below):

Cartoon Cover 3 (below):

Cartoon Cover 4 (below):

Photo cover 1 (below):

Photo Cover 2 (below):

Photo Cover 3 (below):

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