A Toast

A simple toast to wish well on anyone who finds themselves on this page. Here’s to hoping 2023 brings you good health and happiness, closer to your aspirations, and further from your troubles. I’ll share this verse I like to default to when I want to infuse some positive energy into a situation. If you’d like to hear it in it’s original form, take a listen here.

I hope you never have to spend a day alone.

I hope you find a house and then you make that house your home.

I hope that everything you own is only half of what you’ve known

And that you realize only part of where you’re grown is set in stone.

It could be Rome, or maybe Paris!

I hope you never get embarrassed

If you do, it’s on a ferris wheel

I’m screaming so they know the deal

“I love ya!”

I’ll never put no one else above ya

That’s for anyone who needs it

And my sister and my mother.

Happy New Year, here’s to many more.

Mailboxes

Beautiful Idiots Proverb #2: “Just to the next mailbox”

A passing thought I had while I was jogging through my neighborhood this morning.

When I was younger I played a lot of sports: lacrosse, basketball, soccer, baseball. My dad was my coach, so I got some extra training at home on the weekends. I was 11 - he’d wake me up at six am and take me to the local gym to do shooting drills. He’d drive me to the high school after hours to play wall ball to improve my stick stills. We’d walk down the street to the baseball field where he’d hit me fly balls and grounders. Then sometimes we would go for runs around the neighborhood. These were the worst.

I realize that’s not a hot take. Most people will tell you running sucks. As a kid I could not have agreed more. I wanted every run to be over as soon as it started. I mean, it doesn’t make any sense. Why would I run away from the comfort of my own home, just to eventually turn around and run back? It was dumb and I would complain the whole time, and every time I asked ‘how much further” my dad would say the same thing: “just to the next mailbox.”

Now, this was a lie, but that was ok. He was trying to get me to push myself when I wanted to give up. I like to think he believed in something I now believe in, which is every person’s ability to excel, perhaps even beyond their own expectations for themselves. If you can commit to pushing your limits, you might be surprised by the results of your efforts. Thinking about it now, I use the mailbox metaphor in just about every aspect of my life, not just my runs (which I go on now more than ever, ironically).

When you set out to achieve something, reaching that end can feel impossibly far away. Setting markers along the way can make it more attainable - they help you keep your focus when inevitably get overwhelmed by the mess that is the middle of a journey.

So four miles might feel much too far, but the next mailbox may only be forty feet away, and when you realize that you were perfectly capable of getting to that mailbox, it’ll feel a little easier to push yourself to the next mailbox, and the one after that and the one after that and before you know it you’ll have made it four miles.

And then, after you’ve made it that far, you’re bound to see something in the distance that you want really bad. Don’t get discouraged… it’s just to the next mailbox.

Pancakes Either Way

Beautiful Idiots Proverb #1: “Is this breakfast or dinner? Pancakes Either Way”

I love pancakes. As a kid, I would eat as many as possible. This desire to conquer the flapjack lent itself to an affinity for the silver dollar pancake (as it was known at the I-84 Diner in Fishkill, my local pancake provider). Smaller cakes meant higher numbers, and though it was the pre-statistical era, there was an argument to be made that I was leading the league in pancake intake, especially when you consider the additional pancakes eaten at home on weekends, snow days, holidays, and mornings after sleepovers.

As I got older, the pancakes evolved. We’re talking short stack, full stack, chocolate chip, banana walnut, cinnamon apple, blueberry - the possibilities are truly endless. I learned the sacred combination that is pancake mix, eggs, and water (or milk or whatever you do to make yours… I’m a simple man, the less steps the better) and I began to make pancakes for myself. Size would vary, shape would vary - I might have even made a Mickey Mouse pancake if I was feeling fancy.

Soon enough the freedom of a driver’s license made the world mine. I could go anywhere, any time, and eat as many pancakes as I wanted. That’s exactly what happened. There were many late night trips to the diner, and I feasted.

This habit lived on, and years later I found myself living walking distance from a Denny’s in Anaheim. I’m not particularly proud of it but my friend and fellow Beautiful Idiot Understanding and I (this is Joe speaking, btw) made countless trips to that Denny’s, where I found myself eating pancakes in the still of the night.

I have to admit here that I eventually became a bit confused. Pancakes began as a breakfast food - a special way to start a day. Then I learned how to make them, and since they were one of the only things I could make, they became a dinner option as well. Then they were a late night snack. After that, they just kind of made my stomach hurt. Lost in the whirlwind of my 20s, I no longer knew what to make of my precious pancake.

That’s the thing, though. In our society, inundated with options and information, I’ve found that people are compelled to organize. We need to put labels on everything so everything has a place in our overstimulated brains. I don’t think that’s always necessary. In fact, I think it might be detrimental to most of the things that exist in our universe, pancakes included. There are lots of things around us that don’t fit cleanly into boxes, and while it may be hard to accept at first, embracing the reality of the unknown can liberate us. My point is eat the pancakes, don’t worry what time it is.

Part of our mission as Beautiful Idiots is to share the wisdom we’ve gathered on our journey through life. The goal here isn’t to force a philosophy upon you. It’s simply to offer a piece of advice that’s helped us navigate the waters, in the hope that it might also keep you afloat. So maybe this collection connects with you - take what you need, leave the rest for someone else. Maybe these maxims raise within you a desire to question the world around you, observe with a more inquisitive eye. Perhaps they reveal a deeper appreciation for your experience, and urge you to embrace the world with a renewed energy that allows you to radiate joy, love and laughter - that would be beautiful. Maybe they mean nothing to you and you think we’re idiots. All true.

Presenting Beautiful Idiots Proverbs.

Beginnings

We’re a record label. We’re an independent film studio. We’re entrepreneurs. We’re your friends.

We are Beautiful Idiots LLC.

We’re here to share our ideas and we’re going to have fun doing it. Our goals are wide-ranging and very ambitious but for now we’ll keep it simple.

In this coming year 2023, we’ll introduce four artists - Roe’s Garden, The New Hippies, The Corner Store, and Theatre Kids.

Our hope is that in at least one of these four acts, you’ll find something for you, and we can welcome you into our community, and we can all be Beautiful Idiots together.

So thank you in advance for your attention and engagement. In return we will treat them with the utmost respect.

Talk soon.