A Prompt Response – You’ve Been Warned
What was the last live performance you saw?
You’ve been warned!
The last live performance I saw was in New York City just over a year ago, at a club called the Warsaw in Brooklyn. I was extremely excited to be in NYC at the same time as this band, my favorite for well over the last year. I could go on and on about them if I chose…
The Warning.
To quote their introduction:
“We’re three sisters from Monterrey, México. We love rock, we love music.”
The Warning draw strength and power from a lifetime of sisterhood and music. The Mexico-born sister trio—Daniela “Dany” [guitar, lead vocals, piano], Paulina “Pau” [drums, vocals, piano], and Alejandra “Ale” Villarreal [bass, piano, backing vocals]—have logged thousands of miles on the road, generated hundreds of millions of streams, and left countless fans in awe. They initially made waves with a string of independent releases, paving the way for their acclaimed 2022 full-length offering ERROR. Between performing alongside Muse, Foo Fighters, Guns N’ Roses, Royal Blood, The Pretty Reckless, and Three Days Grace, the band ignited MTV’s Extended Play Stage at the 2023 MTV VMAs. Representative of their cultural impact, Pepsi even notably chose them as the face of Pepsi Black in Mexico. Now, The Warning embrace their destiny on their 2024 full-length album, Keep Me Fed [LAVA/Republic Records] out on June 28th.
And they are incredible. Their YouTube channel is full of videos and conversations and is brimming with commentary from the Warning Army.
If you do nothing else, watch their concert at the Pepsi in Mexico City…it’s epic.
They were every bit as good live at the show I saw. Can’t recommend enough.
This post is one of many in my responses to random prompts surfaced by the application that tracks my website statistics, as well as any others I encounter.
A Prompt Response
Today’s Prompt
If you could permanently ban a word from general usage, which one would it be? Why?
At the risk of being a downer, I despise the phrase “Welcome in.”
I remember the first time I heard it at a Mr. Pickles Sandwich Shop in Templeton, California. That Mr. Pickles is no longer there, but sadly, the grammar horror show legacy remains.
When I first heard it, I thought the employee had not spoken clearly. But that was not the case; subsequent visits indicated that the phrase was here to stay, at least at Mr. Pickles. I ceased going to Mr. Pickles almost immediately, because it was just that irritating. The phrase seems lazy and impersonal, as if we decided to reduce a greeting to the smallest form we could standardize.
Except that was already a thing: “Welcome!” The “in” isn’t even necessary, and yet…there it is. A broken, sad, colloquial phrase not worthy of full meaning or investment.
Nowadays it’s used everywhere, and I continue to clench my teeth and debate if the place I am going is worth the utter spoken failure. What else can one do if they do not wish to be “Welcomed in”?
This post is one of many in my responses to random prompts surfaced by the application that tracks my website statistics, as well as any others I encounter.
A Prompt Response
Today’s Prompt
Describe a random encounter with a stranger that stuck out positively to you.
I’m a fairly introverted person. I don’t often end up in conversations with strangers, would almost never speak to a stranger unless spoken to, and don’t like mingling with crowds of people I don’t know. The only time I even voluntarily end up in situations like that are either playing in front of crowds when I was a musician, or the poker room. And in both of those cases, I have a reason for doing the thing I’m doing. And luckily, neither require recreational conversation.
In March of 2017 I was a few weeks away from starting at Amazon. I’d already accepted the offer and was waiting for my official start date. I was coming off of a six month break after leaving my previous company, CoStar, and hadn’t really pursued Amazon specifically, but when the chance came to interview I prepared and was able to nail it. Regardless, I was still nervous about the idea of working for a FAANG company after 17 years of sustained success in a fairly stable, predictable environment at LoopNet and CoStar.
My uncle and I went to Las Vegas for one of our patented annual getaways. We’d spend four to five days playing poker tournaments at Caesar’s Palace. I often did well; of the 15 or so tournaments we would play I’d place quite a few times, and win a couple. The fields weren’t super deep, maybe 100 or so, and it was a good way to get away, relax, see one of my favorite people in the whole world, and play some poker.
The last night of our stay I hit a bit of bad luck and busted out of a tournament early. I wasn’t too sad; earlier that night I’d managed to win one and I felt like I was playing pretty well. So I took my tournament winnings and requested a seat at one of the $2-$5 no limit cash games.
I ended up sitting next to trio of friends at one of the tables, with a woman in her late 20s immediately to my right. To her right was one of her friends, a tall man about the same age. As I mentioned, I don’t talk much socially, not even at (or maybe especially at) a poker table, but during a slow run of cards the man asked me what I did for work. I told him I was about to start at Amazon as an engineering manager.
The woman’s eyes lit up and she told me she was a software engineer at Zappos, a company that Amazon had acquired the year before.
We spent the next hour or so chatting about engineering, software, Amazon culture, Zappos, and anything else that mattered, and in doing so, the woman slowly eased my concerns about my new role and new adventure. We may have even played a pot or two. To this day it remains one of the few social moments where I didn’t care about what I was saying or how I was being viewed or anything else that would set off my internal introvert…just two software engineers talking shop at the poker table.
Eventually, my uncle was also knocked out of the tournament, and came over to let me know it was time to head out. I turned to the woman and thanked her for the conversation and the information and the enjoyable company, before getting up to cash in my chips.
The shock on my uncle’s face was blatantly obvious, and in many ways, almost as rewarding as the reassurance provided by the hour of shop talk.
This post is one of many in my responses to random prompts surfaced by the application that tracks my website statistics, as well as any others I encounter.
Be welcome and true.
Rob Hope 