morning commute

Nobody panic, I’m back, I’m back. After my last post I did a little de-clogging of the creative arteries by isolating myself from all forms of electronic communication on a boat in the middle of Lake Shasta. For four fabulous days my morning commute was as you see it in the image above.

naked

It is mildly traumatic to see a girl that I almost dated, naked on my television. Make no mistake I like nudity on Showtime’s shows as much as the next guy, but to see the girl that spurned my courting advances, in the buff, in the comfort of my own living room makes me feel like a cheat. If my moves couldn’t get her clothes off six years ago, it seems odd that I should be allowed to look behind the naked mystery curtain now just because I pay my cable bill on time.

A friend of mine, a model, ran into the reverse situation when she took a break from her fashion career to go to college. There on the wall of the dorm room of the boy that had just taken her to dinner, was a magazine tear of her in a lingerie ad. Eew. Gross.

Nudity is one of those things that has a changing effect depending on the situation in which its presented. On a fashion set there’s naked bits, male and female, flopping around all the time. Nobody gives it a second glance. At least no one who still has a job in this industry.

Other times nudity happens at an inopportune moment. In college, a girl came into my room and tore off her shirt when I was semi comatose from too many steins of beer. “Put yer cothes back on dear, I’d just embarrass myself.”

“Huh?”

“You know what a marshmallow is and you know what parking meter is, try putting the former into the latter.”

“Eew. Gross.”

“G’night.”

I’ve seen all kinds of naked in all kinds of situations. But there’s something about trying, and losing to win a girls heart, and seeing nothing that makes the nudity of the girl whose heart you win all that more special.

So if in the past I tried to date you and I never got past first base, please send a list of the productions in which you shed your clothes to so I can avoid watching them.

I can’t take the guilt.

an open letter to miki johnson.

For those of you who wish you were me because I know Miki Johnson, give it up. She’s traveling the world and totally unavailable for schmoozy cocktails. For those of you who don’t know who Miki Johnson is, I’ll tell you, but you’ve just been demoted to the A-minus list.

If you ever read the Resolve Blog up until last May or American Photo a few years ago and thought; “wow this is really good,” it’s because of Miki. She is a superlative writer and among the best editors I’ve ever worked with. Insightful, thorough, creative and currently traveling the world, not writing a word.

A few days ago she posted a plea on her blog looking for guidance as to how to travel and write when the former gets in the way of the latter, even though the latter is what you want to do about the former.

I’m a fairly adept traveler, but this is the longest I’ve ever done it, and it takes up most of my energy just to find where I’m going, get settled, figure out what I should be doing, contact people, find an outlet for my charger, find food that doesn’t put me in a coma, figure out a new shower, find a towel…you get the idea.

You can’t do both.

Writing is time consuming. It isolates you completely from the world around you, which gleefully passes you by as you toil over syllables. The romantic Hollywood movie portrayal of writing which is usually manifest in wretched montages of seasonal changes superimposed over a writer hard at work in front of a computer is total gull guano.

The process is much more akin to running in a burlap sack race while drinking a martini. You leap forward a few yards, then fall down. Get up. Leap forward a few yards, then fall down. Some days are better than others, and I swear that; how much sleep you’ve had, what you ate for breakfast, how your life is going in general and where you are writing are huge factors in the varying degrees between brilliance and stupidity in your writing.

The secret to traveling and writing is in the snippets. Everywhere you go, shoot pictures and write inspired sentences in a notebook to mark the events. The inevitability of a quiet day on which you will want to look at your notes and images and write a piece about them is guaranteed. Often times you’ll find yourself in some cafe, or on some couch and you’ll just be inspired. The biggest mistake that is made in these contemporary technological times is that you’ll feel that you need your computer to write. So if inspiration hits, and you’re not near your laptop, you’ll choose to wait until you are which means the inspiration will have passed.

There is enormous truth in the saying “write when inspired, rest when tired.” There is also huge advantages to carrying the always portable no-need-to-recharge pencil and notebook with you so you can write when you feel it.

Brief behind the scenes of Pixar’s new short

and now we drop a steamy poo on top of everything

I am cryaughing this morning. That is to say crying and laughing at the same time. The feeling is like when you’re at funeral and someone brings up a funny moment from the deceased’s past and you can’t help laughing at the memory of it, but at the same time you’re crying because they’ve passed away. That’s how I feel about the Forbes magazine.

Paul Maidment, the editor of Forbes.com and executive editor of Forbes magazine has bid adios, moving on to bigger and better things. To fill the void Lewis Dvorkin, the founder of True/Slant, a crowdsourced news site that was purchased by Forbes last May, announced his strategy for the future of the highly respected online business news site. He’s going to allow submissions from unpaid contributors.

“Forbes editors will increasingly become curators of talent”.

Ahhhhh haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa haaa.

Damn, I’m gonna miss Forbes.

comments debate gets bigger

I read a fabulous piece by John Gruber over at Daring Fireball about how Joe Wilcox, a person whom Gruber has criticized on his blog, is accusing Gruber of “not being a man” because he doesn’t allow comments on his site. This lead to wonderful response piece by Derek Powazek about his choice for redesigning his blog sans comments.

To quote myself from a few weeks ago;

As much as I like to start my morning with a big glass of Sunny Delight vitamin “C” enriched orange drink and read comments from readers who I have upset, I felt the time had come for a change. You see the blog comments were starting to influence what I was writing. Because like any other whacked out, insecure, creative type I was starting to care what people thought about my content. That makes for boring, uninspired, I-hope-everyone-likes-this-post writing. I write in enough venues where I have to be conscious of my audience, and editors, and other forces with whom I have to maintain a certain level decorum.

In response to Joe Wilcox; just ’cause you do, don’t mean everyone has to. The internet is one of the few remaining spaces that allows total individuality. I can’t abide by anyone suggesting that there are any rules out here. A blog is what you make it. Real men sort out a ways to get around obstacles, and cowards whine about road blocks.