Happiest place in NYC...

...is about 1,000 feet from our apartment, according to this new "scientific" study. So I'm going to take credit for that, even though the color-coded key for our actual block is more of an ennui-tinged baby blue. I will blame that on some of our jerky neighbors.

The "study" was based on an analysis of Tweets sent from various locations throughout the city, and how positive or negative they were, e.g. "Beautiful day, totally happy, " or "Ick, just saw one of the Kardashians."

Keep in mind that the entire universe of Tweets, Facebook posts, and Foursquare check-ins consists solely of Farmville requests, inane "inspirational" quotes, and "taking my dog for a walk now" posts. There's not a lot of usable data to analyze.

Kudos to the scientists at the University of Vermont for doing this. The MIT guys apparently beat them out for the grant to study the impact of dark matter on black holes. UV got the Twitter happiness map gig.

For the record, here's what the happiest place in NYC looks like.


Can't argue with science.

Procrastination update

Jennifer told me last night that she spent $200 on beads for making jewelry. She said, "Usually I just buy a few at a time to make whatever piece of jewelry I'm making, but I decided to just buy a bigger supply so I'll have them."

I said, "Jennifer! When one of us is going to make a purchase of $200 or more, we really should tell each other in advance, don't you think?"

Then I smiled at Samuel and made a little guitar solo gesture.

Procrastination

I'm having a difficult time finishing revisions to a manuscript. I was hoping to finish last weekend, then this weekend. And despite spending a good 6 hours on it, off and on, I'm just not getting it right.


But I did manage to procrastinate by buying this guitar, even though I don't play the guitar.

Okay. See, Samuel and I were walking the dogs last night, and I said, "You know what would be cool?"

He said, "What?"

I said, "If we could play the guitar intro from Johnny B Goode. We could go into a guitar store and casually pick up a guitar, and just play like eight bars, and everyone would go, 'Whoa.'"



He said, "And what if they asked you to play something else?"

I said, "You'd just play the same thing again and hope they didn't notice."

So we come home, and I still can't get the manuscript right, and it's 10pm, then it's 11pm, and finally I decide to type in "Johnny B. Goode guitar solo" on YouTube, just for a 5-minute break.

And by 2am I owned a new guitar. Funny how that works.

I didn't tell Jennifer yet, so let's keep it between us for now.

Once more to the well

The email was from Nicole at my old company. The subject line: "Dodgeball, Game 1, tonight at 7pm."

"Todd, We need you! We are down a ton of players and can't field a team!! We are playing at 67th and York. Can you come?!"

I thought dodgeball season was over. I already crossed it off my bucket list and threw away my team jersey. I haven't even worked for that company for two months. The gig only lasted seven weeks to begin with.



Team Player: Noun. A person who plays or works well as a member of a team or group; Todd Tarpley.

Only five of us showed up. We played one person short. We got killed. I'm going back into retirement.

Marked down

Poor little "How About a Kiss For Me?" is coming to the end of its natural life. Amazon marked it down last week to $6.99, and now it's down to $5.50. It had a nice 2-year run, earned back its advance, and was even released in paperback by Scholastic.

But it's not going to live to see a second printing. Once Amazon clears out its inventory it will only live on as an "Available from these sellers" used book.

The good news? As of today it's Baby Maggie's favorite book. If you ask for anything more than that in life you're just being greedy.

The other good news? "Ten Tiny Toes" will be out in five months. I've seen the almost-final version, and it looks great, but I'm not allowed to post any visuals online yet :(

So...circle of life, man.

Take us home, Elton:

Summer is coming

Business trip

Just got back from a trip to Seattle.

I'm different than most business travelers.

My dream is to someday sit in a row with a sleepy mom with an infant in her lap and a toddler in the middle seat. And I tell the mom, "You can sleep the whole flight, I'll keep them entertained." And the toddler and I draw and play games and read books, and the baby falls asleep in my lap without crying or needing a diaper change.

That is some exhausted mom's dream, too, but it's not the kind of seat assignment you can request without seeming creepy or psychotic. Let alone the part about the baby not crying or needing a diaper change.

In any event, I sat next to a person whose arms hung four inches over the armrest.

Glad to be home again.