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Where’s your bear suit now?

I have been part of several wicked projects since working at the Times-Union. I started MyClaySun.com and turned that into a successful site (except for that part where they fired all of the staff and closed the bureau). I also, with help from an awesome co-worker and friend, started our Twitter feed. A core group of us dominated coverage when Tropical Storm Fay blew her salty way through Jacksonville, and owned the presidential elections back in November.

But in the last 728 days of employment, only those 4 things come close to the sheer rocktacularness of the most recent project. Urban Jacksonville Weekly.

Local blogger/communit activist, Joey Marchy, had the idea for a weekly podcast, and invited a equally respected figure, Tony Allegretti and me to co-host it with him. I’m not sure what inspired them to pick a ginger, but I bet it has something to do with having a minority on their show.

There’s probably a whole posting’s worth of material I could write about this, but it’s late and I’ve been drinking, so I’m going to leave it at this – this is what I hope the future of media is. Smart partnerships with smart people, and realizing that owning content is unnecessary at best, foolish as hell at worst.

As for yourself – we’re going to be doing this every Tuesday afternoon for the near future, so check it at UrbanJacksonvilleWeekly.com

Darth Obama

Day #1 in office, and already Obama is giving Biden the “shut your mouth of daddy’s going to shut it for you” look. Check it:

A word on Pandora

Pandora is a bitch

Pandora radio is cool, and totally worth streaming at my job despite the fact it’s illegal or uses all of the hot water at work or whatever, but it’s terrible at predicting what I want to listen to.

No matter what channel I create, I’m back at fucking Neil Young within half a dozen songs.

Today, I created a Daniel Johnston channel. The second song (after I told Pandora I liked the Johnston song) was NEIL DIAMOND’S SUGAR MOUNTAIN. There is absolutely no correlation between the two artists; certainly not on the second guess, anyway.

What’s the opposite of Neil Diamond? Whatever it is, I’m going to create a channel for that artist and wait to see how long until Neil and I reunite.

*also, Pandora is now interrupting my songs, every dozen or 18, with a 15-second commercial. i am ok with it*

John Fante

Last night at Kickbacks, over a few beers and lots of Elvis vs. Tupac debate, I managed to shoehorn John Fante into the conversation.

If you’re already familiar with Fante, welcome to the club, but you might want to stop reading because this is headed straight to hero-worship, and most definitely isn’t going to cover any new ground. So let’s start with this: John Fante is the most under-appreciated literary mind in American history.

There’s no reason to get too dorktacular on this blog, so I’m going to stop there. No literary analysis or any of that worthless shit, just my opinion. Which makes it a fact.

If you’ve ever read and enjoyed Bukowski, David Sedaris, or, god forbid, that masochistic metronome Chuck Palahniuk, you’ll probably dig Fante. Honestly, I have never understood the Fante/Palahnuik comparison, but I can’t avoid it.

Go buy a copy of Ask the Dust. I would lend you my copy, but Luis took it last night.

Sometimes

I forget that I have seen Tom Waits LIVE IN CONCERT.

Big, bigger, biggerest

the big move

So, we did it. Diana and I are gettin’ hitched, tying the knot, taking the plunge, living the rest of our lives in torturous monogamy. You know, whatever they call it.

Twas the morning of Christmas Eve, about 8 in the morning. Diana and I were at one of our favorite spots in the world (so far), a bald spot on the side of a mountain near the North Carolina border. You can see all of upstate South Carolina from there, and we planned on watching the sun rise.

the spot
An artist’s rendering of the area.

I had been carrying the ring around for months. I actually picked it up from the jewelers on Thursday, Aug. 21st, or, for those Jacksonville residents among us, the day Tropical Storm Fay decided to take a huge dump on us. I managed to make it over to the jewelers in Avondale and back to the paper just before they closed most of the roads in Riverside/San Marco.

Anyway, it was an amazing moment way up there in the mountains, and I even managed to video tape it. My tiny little point-and-shoot takes good video for it’s size, and I set it up behind us, looking out over the mountain, and started recording. There’s nothing you need to know about the video except for this:

Our damned dog.
Somewhere behind that dog are two very happy people.

As soon as I stood up and dropped to one knee, Jax ran for freedom. He immediately walked behind us, between us and the camera, shook himself off, stood ass-first in front of the camera, then fell to the ground and starting licking himself. It was perfect.

Shoot the piano player

A few days ago I tried changing Nuinca.com from Yahoo hosting to Dreamhost hosting. 

Something went wrong, however, but it was most definitely not my fault and I blame it on that short-bus of the internet, 4chan. 

There’s a good chance I will try changing my hosting within the next few days and that random problem (that isn’t my fault) might crop up again. So if Nuinca.com 404’s or DNS errors out on you, my apologies. But you can send 4chan an e-mail in case it happens. They deserve your ire.

The big test

I have an idea and I want you all to help.

Since work seems determined to crush my soul and drink the tears of helplessness that I cry every day, I have decided to stay as creative as possible. *no, Nick, not that kind of creative. That was mostly a college thing.

Let’s put some scripts together for 5-second films. They don’t really have to be five seconds long, but they should be short. And awesome. Short and awesome.

We can film them without taking any time, and if we only do one a week, we still can amass a decent body of work in a short period of time. Here’s an example in case all of these fancy words have you confused:

Scene: Burrito Gallery at lunch. Group of people sitting around a table, everyone is talking, comfortable, happy to be there. Camera is at the table, watching the waitress (Actor 2) walk up, carrying a bottle of something. She sets bottle down in front of Actor 1.

Actor 1: Man, I fucking love this stuff

Actor 2: Then why don’t you marry it?

Actor 1, laughing: Maybe I will

Actor 3: That’s what happens when you let the gay’s marry.

See? I “adapted” this from a conversation we had at the lovely Burrito Gallery the other day. Yes, I outright stole it. But it’s funny, and we could re-shoot it at BG next time we are there, and our spirits would rejoice in the greatness that is doing things for ourselves.

So I’m asking you to send me your ideas/scripts. Leave them as comments, e-mail them to me, whatever. But let’s do this. I don’t have you be involved, you can do it yourself. Maybe once we do several we can put them up on the internets and just watch the fame and fortunes roll in. Maybe they will even go viral!

/not funny

New Year’s resolution

There’s only one this year.

Delete every single Our Lady Peace song off my computer. Cuz damn, seriously.

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