Blog

  • Nostalgia

    A good friend of mine told me once that nostalgia is nothing more than falling in love with old things you never really liked that much. It was a sham and should be avoided. It’s a great line, though rather pessimistic, but he was going through a divorce at the time.

    I agree with the sentiment of the statement, and want to fully commit to its concept, but as I have crossed into the realm of where some of my past was twenty years ago, nostalgia has started to creep into my thoughts. I tried to deflect, that was merely a remembrance, which was influencing current creative decisions. Such as an inspiration for a collage of some sort.

    I don’t want to be the person that starts thinking that the past was a better place, as I believe that is what leads to sedimentary thinking, and stifles growth. The past was the past, and it really wasn’t that great.

    But…

    It sure was a lot of fun listen to Oasis’ new album with all my friends spread – dabbled- around my living room. Each of us silently flipping through a magazine (EW or Maxim,) nodding in approval as each song ended.

    That was a good time, and I do miss it.

    But…

    Nothing that I do will ever take me back to that time. It’s sadly and fondly in the past.

    But, it is fun to listen to the Oasis catalogue on Spotify.

  • Snow

    I went to work in the snow this morning. It wasn’t a major storm, as the snow melted as soon as it hit the ground, but it did coat cars and the trees. I did have to put my hat on, puffy coat and snow boots (more for aesthetic than need) to commute across the city.

    Having grown up in Texas, snow was such a rare and life disrupting event. In New York, it takes a blizzard to shut the City down. In Texas, everything comes to a halt if it starts snowing, regardless if it sticks or not.

    The first time I saw snow was when I was five or six. I had gone to bed, and in the morning, my mother got me up, saying that she had a surprise for me. She took me to the sliding glass door that opened to the back yard. She had the curtain drawn, and made me stand in front of it. I remember being so sleepy confused as to what was happening. Then she pulled the curtain with a whoosh, and I saw the perfect white of snow covering our bare rectangled backyard. I just had to go out in it, and she dressed me and let me run free. I made a snowman, and threw snowballs at the fence and over it. Snow angels and just stomping around in it. I’m 40 years old, and snow is still a treat to me.

  • Marching

    Today marks one year since Trump was sworn in. Tomorrow will be one year since the Women’s March, which we took part in. We never made it to 5th Ave, as the crowd was so large, but it was good time protesting the president. With the wife and the kid, and 400,000 other people, it did feel like we all were contributing, and resisting what we all knew could be a huge roll back of all of our freedoms.

    At the conclusion of this first year of the Trump presidency, I do feel completely justified in our protest. I also see the need for today’s Women’s March as well. If we don’t stand up now, then we will continue to see more and more of our freedoms attacked.

    But after the marches, the real work lays before us. It’s the next day that is more important, for that is the day when we have to start the process of getting ready for the midterm elections. I am encouraged by all the candidates that are stepping up to run. I see all the work my friends are doing to turn out the vote. And the constant talking about these issues, which continues to get people engaged.

    Will there be a huge blue tide that will rise in November? Maybe… Maybe state houses and Congress will flip… Maybe. What I hope happens is that more people turn out to vote than ever before. And that tide, the tide of voting, keeps building and swelling election after election.

  • News Media

    I am not a fan of VICE Media. There is something about the organization that has always rubbed me the wrong way. It’s like they want to be the more adult Buzzfeed, but what they come across to me is a Dan Cortese BK Tee-Vee commercial from the 90’s. Now, I do fully admit that they do get it right when it comes to their reporting, especially in regard to how they covered all the Charlottesville violence. I might not like the package it’s in, but it is a solid product.

    I bring all of this up for a good reason, and it’s that I think news media will start to function more in the VICE model. Not in the sense that traditional media will hire a bunch of millennials with weird glasses and bad haircuts… I think traditional media will start to be more of a combination of print, video and social. Diversifying their reach.

    The New York Times has started to do this with some of their feature reporting. Their story, “Deliverance From 27,000 Feet” is a piece that has to be read online to get the full impact of the videos, photographs and images. The use of all these different forms of media, enhanced the reporting when it came to this specific story, and I think it is only a matter of time before more newspapers start moving in this direction.

    Furthermore, to take this all back to VICE again, as they now have their own cable network, VICELAND, this is what traditional media will end at; just becoming all-encompassing media companies. Though focused on news, I would not be surprised if The New York Times soon start their own cable channel with 24-hour news, and programming, which is all tied together in a social media way with the newspaper and the website.

  • To Be

    I had drinks last night with a friend, and as we were catching up, and swapping stories about our kids, we touched on the subject of, “what do we want to do when we grow up?” The great existential question we have been given since childhood, and a question that is truly asking, “Who will you be?” It’s funny that two guys in their late 30’s and early 40’s are still asking themselves this question, but is this just the new version of the mid-life crisis that our fathers went through? I would hope that me and my friend handle it better, and don’t make the mistakes of divorce, sports cars, and dying our hair jet black, because it didn’t fool anyone. (Though I do have an ironic fondness for the mid-life crisis guys who would grow ponytails. Kids in the Hall had a spoof on that type of guy.)

    But at the same time, this question of what to do next with my life is a conversation that me and the wife have been having often, lately. We both make a decent living, and though we both work in the field of our interest, it is best described that we work adjacent to our preferred field. Meaning that we are noting doing exactly what we want, but are close. This leads us to make the changes in our career path to get where we want, but that to a degree might mean starting over, or that’s how it feels… or should we just say fuck it, and go in a completely new direction.