You Can't Find Your Footing Until You Lose It

“We have to be thrown off balance to find our footing. It’s better to jump than fall. And here I am.”

— Matthew McConaughey, **‘Greenlights’**

Simple and salient words of wisdom—or “bumper stickers”—as Mr. Alright Alright Alright categorizes insights worthy of ‘writing down to forget’ (another nugget from his book “Greenlights,” one of my favorite reads that changed my life).

Hence, it felt appropriate to open with a quote from his first written work for my first-ever, grammatically imperfect yet never comprising charm and unfiltered flow of thought, the debut of The Home Theater Blog.

Kindly refrain from writing to your local congressman about how I truncated McConaughey’s original shaping of his “footing” phrase to “You can’t find your footing until you lose it.”

Not to take away from his original shaping of it and what has become one of my life mantras - it’s simply an involuntary output of my productive OCD and ADD/ADA (ADA = Attention Deficit Advantage. An alternate version of the clinical term I unabashedly got from ‘The Gold Standard’ before Jeremy Piven was canceled and everyone didn’t have to withhold ‘Entourage’ was one of their top five HBO shows).

But in short, my brain does this with anything it deems valuable enough to retain as snackable and pneumonic-forward as possible by adding my signature.

The BTS tour of my idiosyncrasies is over. Moving on.

I felt using McConaughey’s quote as a source of inspiration for the title of my first installment of this ‘thing’ / creative venture was appropriate for dozens of reasons.

But in the best interests of time and for those who also suffer from dry eye, as some of this is being written in the witching hour of what’s hopefully the final stint of a nocturnal ‘True Detective’ Season 1 Russ Cohle phase (IYKYK), I’ll keep it to three.

These, albeit are 40% of the abridged sum total takeaways and insights of my life since my male frontal lobe started to mature (+/- 25 years old, which my mother has stood by with unwavering fortitude as the age when boys grow to men for as long as I could remember) – and 60% from my life syncing moving to New York on my own in FW 2019 to the present, which I hope are palatable and universal enough to be of value to those you / whoever’s been gracious enough to read this far in.

1. Be kind to yourself.

Whether you get your nose bloody (figuratively) by happenstance and no fault of your own or entirely your fault because you simply had a f*** up – that’s ok. It’s the clearest 1:1 of losing your footing and why “we have to be thrown off balance to find our footing.” The only way forward is to trust that “the world is conspiring to make me happy.” The only way to arrive at that mindset is to have the courage to embrace 11/10 times, as it’s always “better to jump than fall.”

2. CREATE RHYTHM THAT MOVES YOU CLOSER TO your IDEAL orbit.

This is my version of keeping myself, a public contract if you will, of holding myself accountable to make something every day, that your best looks different every day, and not let good get in the way of perfect - pushing the rock forward even when you lose your footing. Whatever you do, make something daily, big or small, that puts you in a position to be pulled into the ideal thing you want.

3. The one who wins is the one who doesn’t quit.

Keep going - simply put. Suppose you’ve seen Interstellar or any tangential space movies / TV shows as often as I have. In that case, I hope the one thing you walked away from watching them was how infinitesimally small of a speck we represent in the grand scheme of the universe and our time spent within it. If you have a setback, a “loss of footing,” as long as you do your best, no more, less, be kind and do as you did when you were a kid.

So now you have context for what inspired The Home Theater Blog…

… and can confirm I’m not using this to sell you a MONAT Volume Revival Hair Kit.

Now, here’s what to expect in terms of rotation for topics we’ll be hitting on:

HTB Category Coverage

Seeing ‘Along Came Polly’ for the first time during my formidable middle school years, I saw a lot of myself in Ben Stiller (Reuben Feffer)—organized, analytical, everything tight and precise. But in my adult years, I've found I may have more of Jennifer Aniston's (Polly Prince) 'non-plan plan' personality and energy than I thought.

With that, I'm going 70:30 Reuben to Polly energy when the pen hits the paper for The Home Theater blog.

The 70% Reuben feffer

Satiating the OCD and planning itch by mapping out the following topics you can always count on to be covered to avoid a race to the bottom that ends in an implosion (same poor planning behind how Reuben’s first date ended with Polly)

If these categories pique your interest, then great - because they’re the cornerstone of HTB:

1. Comedy

Put Colin Jost, Larry David, and Sebastian Maniscalco into a blender, sprinkle in some Pete Correale and Yannis Pappas—and that's precisely what you'll get on the comedy front from HTB. From stand-up comedy material I'm writing to reporting on daily life happenings, I can't help but share my intrusive thoughts and commentary, scripts, stories, etc. You get the idea — and if you don't, go lay down.

2. TV + Film

Take a crock pot and throw in Bill Simmons and his co-hosts on 'The Rewatchables’ podcast, James Lipton from ‘Inside the Actor’s Studio,’ and any interview clip you’ve seen of Quentin Tarantino talking about movies (JRE Epi #1675)—that is what will be served up in this niche, from new releases to old stuff and deep cuts that went straight to DVD in the $5 bin at Walmart.

3. Culture + Lifestyle

From the Greek heartbeat of New York, Astoria, and why everyone should live in a multifamily on the floor above your landlord’s parents at least once in their life (especially during Easter) to the simple pleasures of walking without headphones in the Upper East Side on a block of brownstones to hear 65 year-old-plus millionaires complain.

And yes, occasionally, there will be some coverage of current events. I don’t watch the news, but if it finds my Instagram feed enough where it’s all I see for three scrolls, and I know just enough about it to hold a conversation at a happy hour, you will hear my take.

But what will likely overtake any potential of putting on my Lester Holt hat to give my unlicensed hot take on current events is a commentary on the culture of music and, unashamedly, fashion.

Music — from hat tips to artists and radio hits that dominated the airwaves of millennials’ childhoods, rants on the current diabolical state of hip-hop, share-worthy songs my Spotify Release Radar gifted my ears that week; to the latest culture fluctuation of fashion — the good, bad, and the ugly. We’ll leave it at that.

The 30% Polly prince

If you’re a blog hyper-hard-purist who lives and dies on the sword of optimal word count for blogs per whatever this year’s SEM Rush Guide, The New York Times’ rules for what words you can and can’t capitalize in headers, or the type of person who checks for alt-image text on website photos for fun—you’re at the wrong party, my friend.

You should set sub-zero expectations for word count, length, structure, punctuation, grammar, consistency, coherency of thoughts (on the chance shorthand and vernacular used with friends slip in), etc.

Not careless by any means, but more caring less about the rule makers, and more about creative expression — reminiscent of how David and Victoria Beckham wore matching purple suits for their wedding reception.

`OK! Magazine — July 1999`

And then you look at how those same two present themselves today.

Chic, clean, versatile, color choice match undertones (still learning, but the kid is getting hip to summers and winters) - all up to that 70% “keeping tight,” measured, consistent version of Posh and Becks while maintaining authenticity, the right amount of boldness, and keeping it subtle but significant.

Screenshot 2024-04-09 at 12.56.38 PM.png

Screenshot 2024-04-09 at 12.56.43 PM.png

Screenshot 2024-04-09 at 12.58.05 PM.png

Screenshot 2024-04-09 at 12.58.56 PM.png

Talk about how you can find creative inspo in the strangest of places. Because this impromptu Beckham fashion/style homage, analogy, ode, whatever you want to call it, couldn’t feel like a better means to close this piece out — so I’ll leave you with this:

Whatever percentage of ‘Reuben Feffer’ or post-purple wedding day outfit/modern Beckham style you have that keeps you on the water, organized, accessible, efficient, consistent, etc., without compromising your true self, good - keep riding that wave.

But leave enough room to pull a page from Polly Prince’s ‘non-plan plan’ book. Whether it’s thirty percent of the time or whatever amount that lets you feel and do as you did when you were a kid, splatter the paint on the canvas that is yourself, do it with confidence, feel good doing it - total creative freedom of expression, no pressure on yourself, fear of failure, or anxiety of pursuing your vision because it’s not happening exactly when you want it.