Preview of Friday's shoot -- "M" is for masks

Since I do not, unfortunately, live in Venice, I decided not to post these on Friday. But I kind of liked them, so....

Friday Shoot-out dies in Flaming Ego Crash

Please forgive me, but I have just deleted 90% of my Friday Hometown “M”-themed photo shoot-out from the dashboard. I’m sure I’ll stick in a couple of photos with minimal words but I have dumped what had become a major opus with endless dialogue using every word I could think of that started with “M”. (I.e. massive monologues where Butler meticulously moderates Bagman’s mayhem.) You get the point. And lots and lots of dump snapshots to illustrate a blog-version of stand-up comedy.

I guess some of it was probably funny, but I realized early this morning that I was literally driving myself crazy. Somehow, blogging – particularly the shootout – has become less about connection, communication, sharing and more about performance. My ego has overheated. (Yes, I confess, I have an ego…in Alcoholics Anonymous, I’ve heard alcoholics and addicts defined as “egomaniacs with inferiority complexes.” I don’t like looking at it, but that definition fits me pretty well.)

When I’m writing the blog, it’s like I’m on amphetamine. When I turn off the computer, I crash. Over the last month I’ve slowly become more and more irritable, withdrawn, angry, depressed and disconnected. I didn’t make the connection until this morning when I was preparing to add what I thought was an absolutely hilarious photograph to the manic “M” blog. It was a self-portrait, supposedly to have been taken by Bagman with my cheeks stuffed with marshmallows and the caption: “Mark’s messy mandible masticating mini-marshmallows.” Yes, I had truly lost it.

But it wasn’t the idiocy of the attempted humor that made the connection for me that I was over the edge – it was seeing my face in the photo. The marshmallows extruding from my mouth might have been a bit funny, but my expression was scary. My “smile” was demonic. My eyes were crazed. I looked haggard and totally stressed out. Ego sucks. Ego is the center of addiction for me. And, at least for me, blogging has started to be about feeding my ego.

So I deleted my Friday Shootout blog with the same sad resolve I remember when I poured my last can of beer down the toilet in 1976. I’m still planning to put a small number of pictures up on Friday…I just need to…what is the phrase I’m looking for? Get smaller? Get real? Something like that.

And I have to laugh at the irony of this post. Having resolved to back away a little bit from self-explanatory pontifications, I immediately run to the computer and post a 448 word self-explanatory pontification! Clearly nuts.

BAGMAN and BUTLER (in unison for a change): Why don’t you just shut up, Mark?