First off, I know how the picture below looks. Don’t get me wrong, there are lots of guys who can pull off the backwards hat, I’m just not one of them. It isn’t that it looks especially bad. In fact, it looks kind of OK, but when I was out shooting photos with my peak cap on backwards, I was projecting a cliche that I don’t really embody. As Todd put in in this week’s podcast, I looked as if I was getting ready to play the saxophone in a movie from 1987. The weird thing is, it only looks that way to people who know me. People who don’t might not even have noticed me turning my hat round while I took pictures of a kid doing bike tricks under the “Boardwalk” sign. It is difficult to admit, but I accept the possibility that not all eyes are on me all the time.
Owning it was important to me because, working in Ocean City, I’ve developed a new appreciation for cliches. You can’t pretend to have fun with abandon and still maintain a sense of how you look to other people. It’s something I’m learning to worry about less. I was thinking about the particularly as I was freshening up our “Winterfest of Lights” page. There is no way to look traditionally cool and also enjoy the spectacle. You can’t enjoy a candy cane ironically, so just give in to it. That’s what I learned at last year’s Winterfest and what I’ll likely take with me this year.
Winterfest was only a small part of this week’s podcast. We actually had a guest, Don Singleton, who was a teenage spy (kinda) and has written a couple of books. He talks about his adventures on land and sea. Todd talks about all of the closing parties he’s been attending as we wind down the season and begin preparing for the slog into winter. We’re all finding ways to keep busy and we’ll let you know what they are every week.
The Happy Hour Todcast is recorded weekly at the Pit Stop in Berlin. You can subscribe to the podcast below or listen here.
