One of the more superficial revelations of my recent trip to New York was that I’d never taken a selfie. This realization was driven home by the fact that I saw people who’d come from all over the world seemingly for the sole purpose of taking pictures of themselves on the site of a historic national landmark.
To tell you the truth, it made me feel like an anachronism, an old dog sorely in need of some new tricks. I mean, now that we’ve raised narcissism to the level of religion — and with our Celebrity-in-Chief leading by example — it was time I got with the program, no? So, I bit the bullet.
With that philosophical challenge out of the way, my second challenge was technical: If I were going to take my first selfie, I had to be sure I got my good side. I was positive I’d never use my protractor or my slide rule again. But I used both of them to calculate precisely the right angles at which to position the mirrors and the camera. Then, like they do in forensic investigations of bullet trajectories, I ran strings from various points (mostly windows and lighting fixtures) to the chair in which I intended to be seated to calculate the angles from which the best lighting would be available.
Finally, I had to select the proper wardrobe. Since I’m a Winter, I tried on everything from black turtlenecks to red pajamas, from navy blazers to a white jumpsuit. Then I got bold: I decided to play against season and selected yellow from the Spring palette. And since I thought I’d appear much less pretentious in casual garb, I selected a well-worn hoodie from The Gap.
The result, as you can see, is that I was able to get the perfect shot.
For my next trick, I think I’m going to tackle some selfie video. After all, if it’s good enough for the Videographer-in-Chief, who am I to fall behind? In fact, I’m going to follow his lead in calling attention to a situation that imperils us all, over which we have complete control, and which should be cause for the next Big Panic.
That’s right. I’ll be going to the moon to keep track of the cataclysmic effects of its increasing distance from the earth, which we’ll find out soon enough, no doubt, has some anthropomorphic cause. (Now if we can just figure out who to blame and whose wealth we can confiscate to fix it.)
Stay tuned. I’ll be sending back more videos than you can shake a selfie stick at.
I’m only sorry I waited so long.