If this site were a party, this party would suck. There’s no one here, the host (Nat) is off partying at his other, bigger house (Green Shoots) with his cooler friends and he’s left the sad clown he’s hired to entertain the guests in charge. And, perhaps worst of all, there’s nothing to drink.

Honestly, at this point, I feel like I’m enabling Nat. I’m letting him believe everything’s ok here, everyone’s having fun, there’s no need for drinks. So, I’ve thought about it a lot and I’ve decided the right thing for me to do now is, for every day Nat ignores us, I’m going to post a picture of my son’s pet lizard. Think of it as a blog hostage maneuver. I’m sorry to have to do it, but, in the long run, everyone will be better off. I just feel like Nat needs to know what state his site is in now and, you know, sometimes things need to get a little worse before they get better. If it doesn’t work, that is, if Nat doesn’t come through with his promised beverages, Noonetime.com just might become the next hot Leopard Gecko fan site. So, really, it’s a win-win.

If we had a cat I would use that but we don’t so I’ll use the next best thing –bad cell phone photos of a pet lizard. In my experience, nothing kills a party faster than pulling out pictures of your pets. I’ve got two dogs I could use instead of the lizard, but, frankly, my dogs are pretty photogenic and they sleep in all kinds of hilarious positions. Photos of them will likely draw way more visitors than I had at my blog-writing peak. Ditto for photos of my children who seem to get naked every time I pull the camera out (could become a problem).

You’re probably saying, ‘Ben, just continue doing what you’re doing, the site is going nowhere just fine.’ And you’re right. According to Google Analytics, the site got five visits yesterday. Indeed, the most effective ‘blog hostage’ maneuver I could pull off would probably be to just keep writing.

But the obvious question here is: What were those five people doing on the Noonetime site yesterday? There’s no product yet so we can be pretty sure there was no, ‘huh, I’d like to visit the web site for this tasty beverage’ type of moment. We can also be pretty sure that they weren’t there to re-read an old blog. The re-readability index rating on these blogs has been assessed, by Google Analytics, at -4.8%. I’m not sure what that means but the fact that it’s a negative number strikes me as bad. So, what were those five people doing here?

There’s a website called balloontime.com. Perhaps they meant to go there.

Or perhaps a few of the daily visitors to the Noontime Rotary of Ellsworth, Maine web page got lost last Tuesday.

Or, just the other day, in an unrelated search, I happened upon a web video called “Girl with Huge Naturals Running on a Treadmill.” Maybe they were looking for that.

Here’s an idea. If you five people happen to be back reading this (because you loved yesterday’s visit so much), step forward and identify yourself. We’ll honor you with our “Noonetime Customer of the Month” virtual plaque and Nat will personally send you a coupon for a free Noonetime Naturals True Fruit Soda (see details, void where prohibited (stores)). Please, Nat needs to know who his five fans are.

So, enough of that, let’s get this party started…

Recently, Pepsi Co. sent Nat a “cease and desist” order claiming his bottle looks a little too much like their Izze bottles (Pepsi owns Izze). In my continuing effort, as Nat’s official company blogger, to reveal the soft underbelly of the “start-up” process, as well as to expose Nat in all his foibles and missteps, I decided to write a blog about it. You should know, it’s been tough going for a Noonetime blogger these days. It’s not so much the lack of product to write about –the Noonetime beverage hasn’t exactly featured prominently in my blogs– but more the lack of momentum with our branding. Nat has decided to put Noonetime on hold until he can get some revenue rolling with his other start-up business, a distribution company he’s dubbed “Green Shoots” (http://www.greenshootsdistribution.com/).

The idea for Green Shoots is to create an eventual distribution channel for Noonetime while helping ‘incubate’ some other young brands. Noonetime, once it’s ready, will join the others on Nat’s own Green Shoots trucks. The money made from distributing these other drinks will, in part, help launch Noonetime.

Here are some news links if you’re interested:

http://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/beverage-industry-veteran-utilizes-big-brand-experience-to-create-green-shoots-distribution-an-incubator-for-independent-brands-97054309.html

http://www.bevnet.com/news/2010/6-25-2010-Sambazon_Odwalla_Green

In short, I picked the wrong Nat venture to be the official blogger for.  Green Shoots is rolling along, picking up new brands, riding around in cool trucks while Noonetime is getting “cease and desist” orders while sitting on the back burner. How Pepsi Co. even found it I’ll never know.

So, for a struggling blogger, particularly one whose ‘loyalties’ run a bit thin, the ‘cease and desist’ was a gift from the blog Gods (called “Globs”). I snatched it up, and, for the first time in months, felt optimistic about the blog. I wrote like the wind. I laughed, I cried. I finished it, marveled at it’s beauty, then sent it to Nat, because, as tone-deaf as I am to legal matters, I knew there were jokes the Pepsi Co. lawyers could, without the right light-hearted approach, take wrongly. Nat sent it to his lawyers (yes, he has lawyers. No product, but lawyers) and that’s when it all unravelled.

Here’s Nat’s email to the lawyers (I found it at the bottom of an email he forwarded back to me):

“I am sure the answer will be no, but my friend that writes the blog for Noonetime put the following together and wants to have a blessing to post.  At the very least hopefully you are entertained.”

Here’s the email Nat forwarded me back (from the lawyer):

“The answer is no, but it was entertaining.”

It was nice to know Nat at least tried his best for me.

I decided then to email my lawyer dad and brother and ask them if they thought the blog could be salvaged in any way. I asked if there were specific sentences that could be cut or blocked out, if something could be added, maybe small print I could put at the bottom, maybe I could say a few nice things about the delicious taste of Izze beverages. They just said no. My dad went further and pointed out some jokes that fell flat for him.

That’s when I realized that being a lawyer is pretty easy. And fun.

So, I decided to give it a try and cook up a little counter argument for Nat and his lawyers to use against Pepsi Co.  I opted against using words because I’ve found that they often trip lawyers up and just create more problems than they’re worth.

I sent it to Nat only to then find out that Nat had already caved. He had changed the graphics on the bottles. Thus, Nat had found yet another way to stymie my blogging efforts. (you can see the new design on the home page.)

I’ll get to work on the next blog. Nat will get to work on finding new ways to screw me.

Here was my brilliant counter-argument, in pictures:

The next blog entry is with the Noonetime lawyers right now. I foolishly sent it to Nat before posting just to make sure he was ok with it. He forwarded it on to the lawyers and now, well,  you know how lawyers are –I should probably just get to work on the next one.

Just wanted to let you know I wasn’t slacking with the blog. I’ll keep you posted.

I had planned to write about the strange eating habits of our new pet lizard for this week’s blog but Kate reminded me –after I asked her to pose with the lizard for a series of blog photos—that I’ve got that “little cliffhanger” from the last blog to address. It was nice of her to call it a ‘cliffhanger’ as cliffhanging almost always involves some degree of drama and anticipation. But we both knew it was meant to be condescending. That’s what a good marriage is all about, being able to read each other like that.

I had done quite a bit of online research on leopard geckos by this point and had come up with quite a few fun facts so I was inclined to find ways to blend this material into this, the ‘resolution’ half of the cliffhanger blog. I was on a roll with lizard/juice jokes when Nat called to suggest, again, that I write about my visit two weeks ago to his new warehouse in South San Francisco. We had talked about this before and I had told him it was a nice visit but I really couldn’t see how to do a blog about it. He was calling to try again.

Nat: Just write down how it went, meeting Tim, touring the place…

Ben: But there’s really nothing funny there.

Nat: Why does it need to be funny?

Ben: …Because…that’s what I’m trying to do with the blog.

(Awkward pause)

Nat: Hm. Really? Well, I’m sure you can make it funny.

Ben: Have you been to your warehouse?

Nat: Yeah. What about Tim? He’s nice, right?

Ben: Yeah. Super nice. And virtually un-make-fun-able.

Nat: I’m sure you could come up with something.

Ben: I can’t. Seriously. How would you make fun of Tim.

Nat: I don’t know. His beard?

Ben: His beard is perfect. I’ve never seen a beard like that.

Nat: You’ll come up with something.

Ben: I really won’t.

Nat: Well, maybe I’m paying you too much then.

The front page of the blog has the words “Speak Your Truth” in bold at the top. So I’ll tell you, Nat pays me $50 per blog. That comes out to about $.025 a word (making the “my two cents” saying quite literal) or, if we go hourly, I make roughly $3 an hour.

Without further ado, here are the photos from my visit to the warehouse:

Here’s the warehouse.

This is the main office.

This is where the important files and electronics are kept.

This is Tim.

The view from the street to the right.

The view from the street to the left.

So, back to the little cliffhanger… Nat and I hatched a plan for Noonetime 2.Oh that went like this: Each week I would post little stories about people that, if successful, would embarrass them and entertain the rest of us. Nat would then choose his favorite and take it to a group of film school students he knows (I have no idea how) to turn into a short movie to be then put up on the site.

The idea made sense in terms of moving this whole “truth” (True Fruit Soda) marketing angle forward. Embarrassment is a kind of truth. Sort of. Plus, I’d always dreamed of having my writing adapted to the big screen, or a screen. And Nat, as far as can tell, has always dreamed of having my writing adapted for a screen.

The plan then was to entice blog readers to share their own stories. From there, obviously, it would go viral. Because, as far as I can tell, that’s what videos do on the web.

The idea is a win/win. Nat gets more readers, er, watchers, and I get to increase my hourly wage from $3 to roughly $6, which means I’ll be able to keep buying our lizard those expensive Annie’s Cheddar Bunnies he loves so much.

The first short film is actually already in production. It’s the scene of my brother, Justin, with his inscribed bench press bar. Nat really loved that one, more than anyone else. He spent a good portion of his childhood being tormented by his own big brother so I suspect the revenge aspect was very appealing to him.

Then I shared the idea with my wife, a marketing person by trade.

Kate: It sounds kind of Jackass-y.

Ben: What do you mean?

Kate: It’s just very dude-y.

Apparently, that’s what marketing people do –just add a “y” at the end of a noun and leave it at that.

Ben: Can you explain that a little better?

Kate: It’s just very male. Women don’t really do that. They don’t knock other people down, not for laughs anyway. There’s an anger to it I guess.

Kate knows I don’t have a lot of anger. She wishes I did so she wouldn’t be the only one who beat our kids (no, not really) (but sort of). My strategy has always been to turn my anger inward where it gets converted to depression, thereby making me ineffective and thus less likely to get into a situation that would make me angry. It’s a sad loop.

But it dawns on me that this might just be the thing that’s keeping the man in me alive (see last week’s blog)–my ability to laugh at other’s misfortunes.

I tell Kate that I’ve found what it is that separates me from other women and that if she has any interest at all in not being a lesbian anymore, we need to nurture this asap.

She begins throwing out ideas –booby traps to catch someone tripping on camera, the old (she knows it’s one of my favorites) ‘you’ve got something on your cheek’ gag where you go to wipe it off and just put something gross on their face, pulling down people’s pants in public…

Side Note: It occurs to me that ‘pantsing’, as it’s known in pantsing circles, really is very much just a guy thing. You hardly ever see women pantsing each other. You don’t even see lesbians doing it that often. Is it because there’s not much to see with women and so they just don’t think it’s worth their efforts? But they don’t even do it to guys. So is it the anger thing? A latent gay thing? Or are women just not as funny as men and this sophisticated level of humor just goes right over their heads?

So, I talked to Nat again and told him that Kate thought the idea was dude-y and jackass-y. I knew he w

ould be a little concerned with this critique because Nat has put a fair amount of energy into making sure Noonetime Naturals is appealing to women. Right down to getting all his own teeth capped and polished (he looks a bit like Mike Shanahan now, but even sexier)…

Nat: How about this, we do the video thing and your blog. The dudiness of the video will cancel out the girliness of your blog. We’ll come out even, unisex.

So, in the ongoing effort to get some reader participation going here …I’ll put this question to you: Why does ‘unisex’ mean both sexes when ‘uni’ means one? Best answer gets a free Noonetime mug.

The topic of masculinity has been popping up a lot lately in my house.

As a stay-at-home dad, it’s natural that the topic would pop up from time to time. After all, Kate and I are reversing the age-old roles. I clean the house, look after the kids, run errands, and, at the end of the day, complain of headaches when she puts the moves on me in bed. For the most part, I’ve taken on the traditional mother/wife role happily. But it’s not without it’s drawbacks. For one, I’m becoming a woman.

Studies have shown that hearing babies cry over time raises levels of prolactin in men. Prolactin, if you don’t know, is the hormone that causes breasts to fill up with milk. I’m not lactating (yet) but just the other day, while trying to enjoy my vacation with some time on the beach, I took my shirt off only to have my 12 year-old nephew tell me to put it back on because my breasts were arousing him.

There’s also the loss of testosterone of course. Testosterone is like a muscle. If you don’t use it, you lose it. The other night, Kate, the kids and I were at a restaurant, sitting at an outdoor table. Kate had just come home from a long day at the office and taken over the traditional mother role. I tried, as I do, to reassume the father role. I ordered a beer, sat back, and watched the kids harass their exhausted mother. Then a beautiful woman walked by. I watched her. Kate watched me watch her. But not for the reasons you might think.
She raised her eyebrows as if to ask, “anything?”
All I can do is shrug.
She knows how depressing these moments are for me. She knows that the only thing worse than wanting something and not getting it is not wanting it at all. She also knows it’s mostly her fault for being the employable one of the two of us. She suggests a patch, as in a testosterone patch, but backs off the idea lamenting that it’ll probably just make me hairier. Then our daughter, Louisa, cries because George hit her and I feel my breasts getting heavy again.

Then there’s the increased sensitivity, not just with my breasts but also with my general worldview. The other day, my son, George, was playing in the front yard, doing what he does, making ants miserable, sampling odd berries. I was standing over him, watching with concern as he molested one particular ant. Watching the black ant curl into a sad ball, I asked George how he would feel if he were that ant. He looked up at me with eyes that seemed to say, “What’s wrong with you? It’s an ant,” and went back to his business. George is only three. He’s seen most of the Pixar movies, some of the old Disney ones, but the anthropomorphized ants, bears, cars, and lamps haven’t imprinted on his psyche quite yet. That is to say, an ant is still an ant to George. His testosterone, while small in quantity, runs unabated to his brain, causing him to fashion guns out of vaguely L-shaped sticks, to show off the size of his latest bowel offering, and, yes, to kill ants without remorse. I wish I was more like him.

Emasculation of the stay-at-home dad aside, they say testosterone levels drop considerably after age forty in all men and that even after the age of thirty, a man may lose up to two percent of his testicular function each year.

I happen to know this to be true. I’ve seen it with my dad. His choice of dogs has diminished greatly over the years, both in size and self-respect. First there was a Great Pyrenees named Moet. Then there were the Samoyeds, Sasha and Dexter. Then came a Pit Bull/Vizla mix named Woody. There was a running joke about Woody’s fondness for heads, i.e. humping them. Then came another Vizla (Goose), like Woody only without the pride of the pit bull half, and now, he’s got a Rat Terrier named Bingo.
Even the dog’s names got less dignified.

My mom and her boyfriend are another example. We joke about how much they’re starting to look like each other. The resemblance, it should be noted, has been hastened by each of their cancer medications. His prostate cancer medication slows what little testosterone he’s got left. Her breast cancer medication slows what little estrogen she’s got left. One can imagine them in a few years merging into one cancer free, gender neutral, pear-shaped body and calling it a day.

Then there’s my brother, Beau. For about two months, Beau tried to work into any conversation he possibly could his ‘throwing off the gloves’ in an intramural, coed, over-30 hockey game. It’s hard not to think of this as a last gasp of sorts for Beau and that his trying to find a way to work this anecdote into conversations is just about the saddest last hurrah of manly displays one can imagine.

Side note: Wouldn’t it be interesting if instead of our bodies making testosterone year round, we were instead all given a set amount of testosterone at birth and could use it up however we chose? My brother would have to determine if throwing off his gloves was worth about a year’s worth of testosterone (likely the equivalent at his ripe age of 44). My dad, at age 71, could decide whether using up his last bit of reserves on that new Harley was really the best way to go out. And I’d be saving all mine up for a rainy day. Or maybe I was just born with a deficiency and I used all of what little I had last week bringing home a lizard for George without consulting Kate first. (She was really mad).

If levels drop for most men on an annual basis, I feel mine drop when I say goodbye to Kate each and every morning. She’s off to the big city to make the big bucks, I’m up the stairs to the bathroom, slowly, holding hands, to do a pee-pee before eggies.

So, what does all this have to do with Nat’s True Fruit Soda? Is each bottle of Noonetime Naturals really loaded with 30 mgs of bull testosterone as has been reported*?
(*by me, right now). No, my confessions of my emasculated state (and that of my father, my mother’s boyfriend, and brother) are meant as a step in a new direction for the Noonetime blog. What direction is that, you ask? Well, I can’t say. Not because I don’t know but because Kate says no one is going to read a blog longer than two pages, particularly one about juice. (Ha!) Well, I’m at about the two-page mark. She also told me to come to bed because the light from my laptop screen is keeping her awake. She’s probably looking for some action. And she’s totally not going to get it. Talk about a teaser.

Next week’s blog: the unveiling –not the actual unveiling, just the explanation—of Noonetime blog 2.0. It’s going to be good. You can’t wait.

(Sorry you read all that for nothing. But some of it, not all of it, will make sense in the unveiling… of the explanation. I promise. If nothing else, I feel like you got to know my family a little better and that’s always nice.)

Nat recently sent out to each of his employees a copy of Dr. Seuss’s “Oh, the Places You’ll Go”. It was a team building, morale-boosting effort. Nat’s fun like that.

As you can on the web site, Nat likes to call himself a “tool” when he does or says something sweet-hearted and slightly embarrassing. But “tool” implies a lovable, Homer-like cluelessness. I would choose “weasel”. Others might choose “leader”.

Nat is a morale guy through and through (which is different from a moral guy). He likes spirits to be up. He needs spirits to be up. Talk to him on the phone sometime and let your tenor drop slightly, your response time to a question lag, and Nat’s quick to tell you you’re depressing him and he has to go. Talk about your feelings and he’ll hang up on you. What darkness lurks in that psyche to require such a constant barrage of sunshine, we’ll never know.

But there is one story Nat likes to bring up that could actually help explain both the darkness and his make-it-fun-at-all-costs attitude toward leadership. It was our first coed party. Fourth grade. At my dad’s house.

My dad was a bachelor at the time, living in a mansion with grand pianos and blue velvet couches. The house and baroque décor suited his romantic notions of loneliness. The two large Samoyeds he shared the house with also fit the bill. They were aloof, stoic, handsome sled dogs that attracted a lot of attention wherever they went. The preferred beverage at the time, a pickle jar filled with gin, helped fuel the lonesome playboy image. Most nights around this time were spent alone with his piano and pickle jar. He’d open the French doors off the living room next to the piano and let his Mozart mingle with the hum of the cicadas out in that thick Washington summer air.

Outside of these French doors you’d find a large pool and a side yard that was only really used by the dogs.

My dad’s mindset at the time of the party is hard to figure. One good bet would be that he was a little drunk. Another would be that he was bitter –Rich kids expecting another fancy party at the next big, fancy house? Perhaps he was bored –the fourth kid, the umpteenth mind-numbing pre-pube party? My guess is it was a combination –a perfect storm of bitterness, boredom and a good buzz.

My first memory of the party was Brooke Bralove, my girlfriend, and her crisp, white lacey dress. We were the class’s first couple: BB+BB. We were all dressed up, but her dress was immaculate.

So, soon after everyone arrived, nervous, clinging to the walls, nibbling on Doritos, my Dad announced a game we would all play. He called it “Mine Patrol”. He ushered us out to the back yard, assigned us army ranks, and handed out hefty bags and shovels. The game: Rid the battlefield of land mines, i.e. dog turds. He would stand watch and hand out rank promotions, or demotions, as he saw fit.

Till this day, I have the image of Brooke, bows in her hair, her face crinkled up, holding a hefty bag open for my best friend, VW, who, at my Dad’s coaxing, was shoveling feverishly, trying to get promoted to Lieutenant General. I don’t know remember what Nat was up to but I can only assume he was taking notes.

Conversation with my Dad:

BB: Do you remember if you were drinking then?

Dad: I can’t see why I wouldn’t have been.

BB: Was the game something you had planned out ahead of time or…?

Dad: No, I think it was more of a battlefield decision

BB: Did you not worry about the kids going home after the party, the parents asking how it was, them saying, “it was ok, Ben’s dad made up this game where we picked up dog doo in his back yard. VW made Lieutenant General.”

Dad: No, I really didn’t.

BB: And you’ve never really felt all that guilty about this have you? Even now that you’re not drinking.

Dad: No, I really never have.

BB: How?

Dad: You may not remember this but VW was a bit of a spacey, aimless kid. I think him making Lieutenant General that day gave him the confidence he needed to turn it all around. Where did he end up, Harvard Architecture School?

BB: What about for Brooke and I? You know we broke up soon after that.

Dad: Did you? I’m sorry about that.

BB: Nat says he’s used this “game” as inspiration over the years when leading his employees.

Dad: Well, I’m glad someone appreciates my creativity.

BB: OK, well, this has been good for me. Not in a healing sense, it’s actually set me back a little bit, but in a blog sense, I think this could be a good forum for old friends who’d like to share their stories from that day, talk through their trauma, and exchange lawyer’s phone numbers.

Dad: I know some good ones.

BB: Happy Father’s Day.

Dad: Thanks, Sonny.

Six Noonetime Naturals arrived via FedEx the other day. I had prodded Nat to send them, explaining that I was the blogger and I didn’t even know what the drink tastes like.

Here are the photos from my family’s tasting of Nat’s True Fruit Soda:

Here are the sodas all lined up. I included a robot to give size perspective. These are just taster-sized bottles. The real ones will be bigger. Apparently, the contents are so precious, a full-size bottle’s worth would set Nat way back in his launch.

My first reaction to the drinks was that they look a lot less appetizing without the “sweat drops” and that  the $400 Nat spent to photo-shop them in on the web site welcome page was money well spent. It made me wonder if I should go out with sweat drops on me more often.

Nat was very specific about how we went about doing the tasting. He was worried I wasn’t going to take it seriously I think. Here, Kate is taking it very seriously, as is George. Louisa, a little less so. George and Kate wore pants for the tasting. Lousia and I did not.

Kate is detecting a hint of apple in the apple-flavored drink.

Kate is getting George’s notes on the blueberry.  He said the finish was surprisingly smooth and the caffeine made him want to take off his pants and run.

Louisa tested out some new flavors, mixing blueberry and tangerine, apple and blueberry, tangerine and apple, and blueberry, apple, and tangerine.

The cucumber-flavored one was Louisa’s favorite.

Then it was time for pappa to give it a try.

I really liked it.

Nat said I’d have fans by now. I told him early on that it would be tough to sustain a blog about nothing and he said I wouldn’t have to because people would be commenting all over the place and I could just coast on commenting on comments –what most professional bloggers do as soon as they’ve exhausted all their material and begun writing about time travel. As of today, four people have written in comments for the blog: My Dad (who wanted to know when the drink is coming out), one of my best friends (who also wanted to know when the drink is coming out), a friend of my brother’s in California (who only commented because the blog was about his Green Bay Packers and it literally would’ve killed him not to). The one good one came from my cousin who wrote that he and his wife laughed historically while reading my blog aloud. As a writer, to have your work read aloud is a high complement, but to have your work appreciated in a historical context? That’s amazing. Thank you, Matt.

Even with Matt’s kind words, I was feeling down about my blog. So, this week, I skipped my Thursday blog deadline to see how much I’d be missed. I fell asleep that night imagining the uproar I’d wake up to Friday morning. It’s Monday morning now and I still haven’t heard from anyone.

I took a long walk with my son, George, to talk it through. He’s only three but he listens well. We came to the conclusion that it’s not recognition that I crave so much as it is attention. Much like my mother, I’m happy to receive attention in just about any form, from compliments all the way down to pity. Pity, it should be said, is one of the more underrated forms of attention –not only do people like you more for being worse off than them, but it’s also one of the few types of attention that involves people doing things for you. Also like my mother, I’m quite lazy, so this is a nice bonus. But what I’m looking for now is something more. The things you give up when you deal primarily in pity, namely respect and admiration, can also, I’ve read, feel really nice. By the time we got home, George admitted that some of his injuries aren’t really as bad as he makes them about to be, partly because, he said, he too likes attention.

So I called Nat. I asked if he knew what day it was today. He asked if it was my birthday and I told him, no, it’s Sunday and I still haven’t posted my blog. He told me ‘that’s cool, just try to get it up sometime this week.”

BB: You don’t even care, do you?

NN: About what? The blog? Less and less so.

BB: Why aren’t people writing in with comments? Why doesn’t anyone care that I haven’t turned it in?

NN: People care, just not that much. Besides, what do you want people to say?

Ben, great blog. Question for you… It’s career day at my kid’s school and I’m supposed to go in and tell the kids about my job. I’m an astronaut archeologist (I look for alien fossils on other planets). Blah, I know. Any chance you could pose as me and talk to the kids about blogging for a fruit soda company?

Ben, my two biggest crushes: you and Denzel Washington. I’ve always said I’d watch Denzel read the phone book he’s so good. Well, I’d read the phone book if you wrote it. Maybe the next entry for the blog? A-F?

Ben, my incontinent cat is tearing up my furniture. I need to find him a new home but I love him so much I can hardly bear it. You’re the only person in the world I’d feel comfortable giving him to.

NN: Maybe you should get back to making fun of me. People seemed to really enjoy that.

BB: That’s very typical that you’d want to bring this back to you during this difficult time for me. But, as interesting a marketing angle as it is, I’m worried that ultimately it may not be best for the soda.

NN: Really?

Soon after George and I got home from our walk, Kate (my wife) arrived. She’d been out getting her legs waxed with our daughter, Louisa. I asked how it went and she said, “good, I feel about ten pounds lighter.”

I realized right then that sometimes just because something’s funny, it doesn’t mean it should be shared. Immediately, the appeal of Kate’s funniness was outweighed by the grossness of her hairiness. And she wasn’t even hairy anymore. But the damage was done.

BB: Someday –when you get your act together and take this albatross of a soda from around my neck and put it on supermarket shelves– someone will stroll down the aisle looking for a healthy soda alternative and they’ll see Noonetime Naturals sitting there and an image of your shark tooth sticking out of the roof of your mouth or maybe your fat, weak ankles will pop into their head without them even making the connection consciously and they’ll just keep walking, totally grossed out. Now it might be the image of Kate’s hairy legs that’s forever associated with your soda. Either one is going to be terrible for business.

NN: So, what are you going to do now?

BB: I don’t know. I have Maggie (our nanny) for another couple of hours. I’m thinking matinee.

NN: I mean about the blog.

BB: I really don’t know. I can’t bail on it. Kate would be very disappointed in me. She thinks I have trouble sticking with things. I told her, if she really wants me to stick with it, write in a friggin’ comment for me to comment on. Even better, how about a question for me to answer? Maybe then I won’t have to fritter away expensive nanny hours concocting crazy time travel stories.

NN: Maybe she’ll comment now that you went public with her ten pounds of leg hair removal.

This really was the first time Nat’s been at all helpful –other than providing easy targets for my chastising of him. He gave me an idea. Here’s the thing, I’m fine with the general public not writing in. How could they? There’s no product to hold up and say, ‘huh, I’d like to check out the web site for this beverage.’ But family and friends… what’s their excuse? I send them emails every time my blog goes up. Is it true, as Nat says, they don’t care that much? Perhaps. But maybe it’s my job to make them care. How do you make them care? Better yet, how do you make them care while still offering some entertainment value (while still managing to avoid discussing the True Fruit Soda)? I’ll have to start slow. Tidbits here and there to provoke the people whose lack of commenting I have deemed most egregious. I’ll go back as far as need be to mine the best stuff. I won’t deal with anything that won’t potentially get me in trouble.

So, when my brother, Justin, was in high school he had a weight bench set up in his bedroom. He was dating a girl named Shannon. He was really into her. I remember going into his room, lying on his bench to see if I could lift the bar and noticing a little note, written in neat ball-point, taped to the underside of the bar. It read: Lift for Strength, Lift for Size, Lift for Shannon. I thought this was hilarious and I told everyone. Justin didn’t find it funny at all and, in fact, still doesn’t. Justin, do you want to comment on this?

So, that’s how it’s going to go then. The Justin story is just an innocent sampling. Until Nat gets his soda out there, or until enough people start caring, I’m going to use this space to expose dirty truths; truths about my wife’s personal hygiene, truths about my brother’s cheesiness, truths about my dad possibly being a sociopath (that story coming soon). If it has to be about my friends and family because they’re the only people who are reading this, then fine, I’ll just have to work with that. I’ll hunt them down, one embarrassing story at a time until they participate in the dialogue that is, or isn’t, Noonetime Naturals.

Ps. Kate’s “leg wax” was actually a bikini wax. She made me change it, saying it was too gross with the bikini wax. I told her the truth is often gross but it’s my job to report it.  Then she said, “no it isn’t. You’re just a writing a blog for Nat’s soda.” To which, I said, “Not anymore I’m not.”

The other day, Nat sent over some crack. No, it wasn’t his True Fruit Soda. Nat hasn’t sent any of those over yet because they’re still not out. No, it was a username and password to a web site that shows, on a minute-to-minute basis, how many people are reading the Noonetime web site and for how long they’re reading it and what they’re wearing –or not wearing as was the case with most of my readers—while they do so. I figured such a tool existed –otherwise how would these web sites know to send me all these penis enlargement offers– but I had no idea it could be so fun. When it comes to self-absorption, I’ve always been a ‘lay in bed and contemplate my navel’ kind of guy. But, since getting married, I’ve learned that appearances matter and it’s much harder to examine my navel and pretend to work lying in bed.

So, slowly but surely, I’ve transitioned to the computer and used the internet to meet my loinal needs (not sure where exactly the navel is located but I suspect it’s somewhere in the loinal region). I’ve learned –through facebook and Amazon sales rankings, and google searches– that I can actually be far more self-absorbed with an hour on the internet than I can with three hours lying in bed thinking about myself.

Side Note: I read a while ago about how Deepak Chopra, spiritual guru and best-selling author, became addicted to watching his books climb best-seller lists. He voiced his shame. But even after cleansing himself with this admission, I really doubt he returned to his navel after getting a taste of this synthetic navel web crack.

Anyway, as it so often happens with crack, the highs get weaker just as the cravings get stronger. What I wanted, more than anything now, more than seeing movies of my dreams, was a diagnostic report of my life, my self, my brain. Me. I wanted graphs, flow-charts, percentages, my every experience and every emotion readable and digestible. I wanted to cover my bedroom walls with these flow-charts and begin to truly figure out, who is this man, this enigma? Like the crack, my navel has been offering diminishing returns from age 25 onward. I blame my parents. I blame my wife. Lately, and quite reasonably, I’ve been blaming my kids. So, nowadays, I lay in bed staring at it and it just looks at me and says things like, “are you really paying a nanny fifteen dollars an hour just to look at me?”

When Nat and I spoke on Monday, I had a couple questions for him.

BB: First, do you happen to know if the ‘average time spent on site’ numbers will register, say, if you had one of the blog pages up and forgot to close it before going to sleep?

NN: I don’t know, I guess so.

BB: Ok, secondly, what the hell are you all up in my ass about when I’ve got 378 people reading my blog? Do you have any idea how many people that is?

NN: I do. But presumably some of those people are just checking out the product. Besides, 378 really isn’t…

BB: Seriously? Those are like Ben Affleck biography numbers.

NN: Yeah, I know.

BB: Though I don’t think my Bay Area dog walk book has sold quite as well.

NN: Well, that was more a deck of cards than an actual book, right?

BB: It’s a book of cards. When you go on Amazon, it says, “your book will arrive in 7-10 days.” And when it was reviewed on corgiheaven.com, they said at the end of their three-paw review, “Other books your dog might enjoy…”

NN: I stand corrected.

BB: I feel like the publisher could’ve done more with that book… It’s like, hello? Dogs, walking, San Francisco… what more can I give you?

NN: So, this was going to be the blog that you write about the soda, right?

BB: Yeah, So, here’s thing. There’s a famous Elvis Costello quote about music journalism I’ve been thinking about lately. You know the one?

NN: Don’t think so.

BB: He said: “Writing about music is like dancing about architecture.” He was pointing out the futility of it. If you want music, listen to it, don’t write or read about it. Well, I was thinking the same could be said for beverages. If you want a beverage drink one, don’t write or read about it. In light of that, I have a quote I’d like to make famous here. I’m not set on the exact phrasing so don’t start running around with it yet. Anyway, here it is: “Writing about soda is like pulling your fingernails out.”

NN: That’s catchy. So, I take it you’re not going to write about the soda again in this one.

BB: Well, here’s the thing.

NN: Another thing?

My Run
I went for a run yesterday in our local woods with our two dogs. It’s a nice loop through some very pretty foliage. Anyway, it must be chipmunk breeding season or something because I couldn’t believe how many tiny chipmunks there were running around. My dogs chased every single one of them. By the end of the first loop, they were totally exhausted, just sat there, cooling their bellies in the dirt, panting. Then another chipmunk would run by and they’d have to get up and chase it. They never caught any, of course. But they kept going. They ran themselves ragged. At the very end of our run, rounding the bend of our last lap, they disappeared again. This time though, there were high-pitched barks and yips that seemed to cover even more ground than with the chipmunk chases. I waited at the car for them. Finally, up over the hill the dogs came, panting, limping, stinking. They’d been sprayed by a skunk. Even they looked miserable. And that’s when I started thinking about this blog for Nat.

BB: So, this run I went on, let’s say it’s the blog. The dogs are me. And the chipmunks, they’re you, or, more specifically, your deficiencies. I have to chase you. It’s what I do. I’m your childhood friend. I’m a dog. You (your faults) are a rascally, tail-flittering little chipmunk. In other words, being aware of all your shortcomings while others are looking up to you as the big CEO… it taunts me. Much the way a scurrying little chipmunk taunts a dog. To suddenly stop making fun of you and start including information about the product… it would be like… imagine you’re a pent-up dog suddenly freed in the woods, you see a chipmunk scurry out of one eye and, out of the other, a fat kid moseying over to pet your head. And, you, shaking with excitement about catching that asshole chipmunk, opt, instead, to get your head petted by the fat kid.

NN: So, writing about soda is like getting patted on the head by a fat kid.

BB: Yeah. That actually sounds better than the fingernails one. But whatever, the skunk… that’s the part I’ve been thinking a lot about.

NN: Who’s the skunk?

BB: Well, I have some ideas. My first thought was, ‘oh, obviously, the skunk represents fame. While chasing you, the chipmunk, and reporting –investigative reporter-style– the truth about you and your insufficiencies as a CEO, I’m probably going to achieve a certain level of fame. As we’ve recently learned, I have 387 people reading me on your web site… And fame, I’ve been told –and frankly, had some experience with shortly after the release of my Ben Affleck book– can feel a lot like getting sprayed by a skunk. You chase it, chase it, chase it, and then, just when you’re about to get it and everyone’s ready to love you, a paparazzi shot of your cellulite-riddled ass shows up on the cover of Us Weekly.

BB: That was one thought.

NN: There’s another thought?

BB: Yeah, why?

NN: Sorry, no, go ahead, this just feels a little bit like having to listen to someone tell you their dream from the night before.

BB: I don’t know what that means but whatever. Another thought was that maybe you’re the chipmunks and I’m the dogs and I’m trying to run down the straight path in life and you keep luring me off into the shrubs of disrepute. Until, of course, I get blasted by a skunk who, I think, represents a street gang that’s trying to kill me. Probably because they’re all hopped up on your ‘politely’ caffeinated juice soda.

But there’s another reading of this that I think might make the most sense. It’s also, unfortunately, the scariest.

NN: Please no.

BB: You know how you’ve had all the these delays getting your soda launched –This new distribution business needing attention, you deciding it’s really important that you build a half-pipe at your Noonetime company headquarters, deciding you need sweat drops on the bottles on the web site and how you were broke so you had to mow your mom’s lawn and clean your room for a week so your mom would give you the $400 it cost to add those sweat drops?

NN: Not all true but ok.

BB: Don’t you find it a little odd that you keep delaying launching the soda just as I keep delaying writing about it?

NN: More that you keep delaying writing about it.

BB: You ever think maybe there’s some force at play here that’s trying to keep your soda from entering the world? Like maybe there’s a reason neither of us want anything to do with it?

NN: I want a lot to do with it.

BB: Well, so, I was thinking that, in the future, maybe your soda is responsible for the death of mankind and that mankind, just before it dies, sent someone, someone who’s working with you right now, a mole, a saboteur, back in time to prevent it from happening.

NN: Or maybe just trying to keep it from being successful. Could be someone really close.

BB: Yeah! Who do you think it is? I’m thinking Brian. That honeydew melon boob joke was really inappropriate. A lawsuit from a small-breasted lady would’ve wiped you out.

NN: Where does the skunk come in then?

BB: Oh yeah, the skunk, well, the skunk blast is… of course… nuclear annihilation.

NN: So, Noonetime Naturals causes the death of mankind by way of nuclear annihilation.

BB: Messed up, right? You might not want to use that in your marketing materials. Could be cool though to put like a little mushroom cloud somewhere on your bottle. So, people who are in on it know why it’s there and feel cool because they know. It’s called foreshadowing. It’s a literary device.

NN: Quick question. Why wouldn’t Noonetime Naturals instead be mankind’s last hope in it’s fight against the evil cyborgs of the future and the future sent someone, a cyborg, back to try to ruin Noonetime before it could ever get off the ground?

BB: I…do…not…compute…. Ha! No, that’s just silly. First of all, there’s no skunk in that scenario.

NN: You, an evil cyborg, went for a run in the woods with your dogs and your dogs got sprayed by a skunk.

BB: Whoa.

[silence]

BB: You really think I’m a cyborg?

NN: Makes some sense –total emotionless disregard for me the company I’m trying to get going. Would’ve thought you’d be in better shape though.

BB: No. I need to be able to fit in, not raise any eyebrows.

NN: Mission accomplished.

BB: Oh my God, I can’t believe I might be a cyborg. So, this changes everything. Your soda just went from killing off humanity to being its only savior.

NN: And you just went from hero saboteur to evil, flabby cyborg.

BB: My head is literally spinning right now.

NN: Literally?

BB: Literally.

NN: I’ll let you go then. This was fun. Next week?

BB: Yeah. Do you think my makers put a chip in my head to record my life? And everyday, in the future, they upload it remotely and marvel at the diagnostics? Do you think I’ll ever get to see them?

NN: We can only hope.

BB: I’m exhausted. I’m gonna go take a nap, gonna dream of electric sheep. I have the nanny for another hour.