Cool Human Tricks

Starting about a week ago, my team started a ritual in which one team member has to start each day by sharing a song via our Microsoft Teams chat. Some of it has been predictably middle of the road, and some has been a fun glimpse into my team members' personalities. For example, the youngest member of my team, a late twenty-something, has an old soul. He rocked us with Hall & Oates, Skynyrd, Kansas, and Tom Petty. And a few things have genuinely been revelations to me.

Like today, when one of the women on the team played a song called Pretty Lady by an Australian solo artist named Tash Sultana. It's a catchy enough tune, with a fun, affirming video - watch it, because affirming is a thing that's really good right now.



But the video isn't what I came here to share. I let it play past the end because I was multi-tasking, and a Tiny Desk Concert featuring Sultana started playing.

It blew me away.

They're a damn force of nature (and they're nonbinary and use the pronoun they), all joy and pain and love and heartache and music. They use a ton of effects to sound bigger than a one-man band, but it's organic, if that makes any sense at all. Do very much enjoy, my good people.

So many questions

What would make you think you could do this?
How would you go about doing it?
Why would you try?
Who is this guy?
And so on.

Amazing Human Tricks

I'm readily and consistently amazed by the sheer variety of the human experience, the multi-hued, manifoldly abled diversity of our brothers and sisters the planet wide.

Like an increasing number of mostly comfortable citizens of the world, I've completed a couple of Spartan races. I'm modestly well-conditioned, and entirely devoid of strength, so I ran well, climbed nearly everything that required it, and did a shitload of burpees when I couldn't completely execute some of the strength events. (Fucking monkey bars, man.)

I ran my most recent race with a guy who's a few years older than me, and a pair of twenty-somethings. The former is married to a woman who owns a local gymnastics gym, and the latter were both coaches at the same gym. I was envious of their sick coordination, absurd body control and strength in endless supply, though I suspect they were a bit surprised that a 45 year-old kept leaving them behind on the running portions of the event.

All of this is preface, really, for a couple of videos. The first is one of the two youngsters at a prominent gymnastics camp, where each year the coaches put on an exhibition for the campers. Check out my man Mark via this Facebook video, which I can't figure out how to embed.

At the same camp, a world-renowned tumbler named Aaron Cook attempted to complete the first-ever standing double backflip. As in, from a standing start, this dude tried to do two full rotations. I've tried to do a single backflip on a trampoline and nearly killed myself. To put it mildly, even thinking about a standing double is insane.

Cue Aaron Cook:



People, especially those outside the halls of American power, are pretty damn amazing.