AlexJonathan.com

ourhandsaretied: Welcome to America, motherfucker.

Tue, 09 Mar 2010 20:22:51 -0500

ourhandsaretied:

Welcome to America, motherfucker.

nevver: “Right again, Robin!” Duo (ver. 1.0)

Thu, 04 Mar 2010 23:47:52 -0500

nevver:

“Right again, Robin!” Duo (ver. 1.0)

merlin: ilovecharts: youmightfindyourself: mike...

Tue, 23 Feb 2010 12:14:39 -0500

merlin:

ilovecharts:

youmightfindyourself:

mike giant

Ummm… yeah.

"Trust me, Davis could care less about being mocked. It wasn’t respect that he worked hard for."

Tue, 02 Feb 2010 08:14:26 -0500

“Trust me, Davis could care less about being mocked. It wasn’t respect that he worked hard for.”

- Berkeley Breathed, in an interview with Vice, continuing my awesome string of kind of negative things about Jim Davis.

"It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s..."

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 13:06:00 -0500

“It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s popularity and repeated myself for another five, 10 or 20 years, the people now “grieving” for “Calvin and Hobbes” would be wishing me dead and cursing newspapers for running tedious, ancient strips like mine instead of acquiring fresher, livelier talent. And I’d be agreeing with them.”

- Bill Watterson, expressing a sentiment Jim Davis can’t fathom.

Production Night.

Mon, 18 Jan 2010 18:03:42 -0500

Driving back from South Bend this weekend, I passed the office of the Muncie Star-Press at around two in the morning. The entire building was dark, except for one floor, which seemed to be burning every fluorescent light it had. I know this was only because someone was doing cleaning, or because those were the lights they always leave on, or because the switch had somehow broken and no one could turn them off until Ed, the guy who knew how to fix the problem, came in the next morning. Maybe someone just forgot to turn them off, whatever the reason, I’m sure it was nothing too out of the ordinary.

It’s masochistic, but I want every production night at every paper to be a disaster, the type of thing where the staff’s shocked the paper made it out in the morning, even though they watched it go to the printers. Better yet, I want someone to find himself, every night, jogging down streets too snowy to drive, with the PDFs burned on a CDR because when FTP doesn’t work, someone’s got to get the paper to press, goddammit.

I want everyone on staff to show up and immediately have a crush on the highest ranking person of the correct sex, not because those people really have anything in common, but just because you’re in this world that’s totally foreign to you and that person has all the answers and is unbelievably talented and is giving you an opportunity and maybe just looks more than a little cute when she feels deadline pressure.

I want everyone in any position of power to have someone they know they can flirt with, not out of some weird sexual harassment thing, but just because they need to not think, even for thirty seconds, about what the fuck is happening at the sports desk.

I want there to be two or three people who know the night’s not over until a phone call tells you it’s Miller Time, and I want this ritual to be unknown to everyone else on staff. I want those two people to have their own patterns for what happens next, and I want them to follow that religiously.

I want the newsroom to be two doors away from someone everyone’s dying to impress, and when he bleeds over the paper the next morning, I want that to fillet everyone to the bone.

I want some young kid writing the staff editorials, trying to find his voice while speaking on behalf of others, and I don’t want anyone, ever, to tell that kid that writing something that takes even one shot at those in power isn’t exactly the same thing as Judith Miller going to prison. Because, to him, I want it to feel exactly the same.

I want everyone to have the one story they really want to write, and I would say I want that to be the last thing they write… but I don’t ever want there to be a last thing. I want no one to retire, no one to graduate, no one to get downsized, no one to walk out the door to spend more time with the kids and the wife, yes, those people are important… but at some point after you’re finally out from under that eternal deadline, when you clock out at five and know you don’t have to think about work again until nine the next morning, someone wonders aloud whether you’re supposed to put a comma before the “and”…

And you know you’d kill to have it all back.

(via ourhandsaretied)

Thu, 07 Jan 2010 08:15:26 -0500

(via ourhandsaretied)

You wind up bored at work and remember you’re not as good at Scrabble as you think you are,...

Mon, 04 Jan 2010 13:33:04 -0500

You wind up bored at work and remember you’re not as good at Scrabble as you think you are, you place the reason you had a Coke Zero phase, and you rediscover how quickly those college words used to fall away when something was really important.

Anyway… not the point right now. The point is she’s smart, funny, nice and one of those just generally awesome people.

Just to make sure JD sees...

Tue, 29 Dec 2009 07:14:37 -0500

Just to make sure JD sees this.

merlin:

frakintosh:

mtlb:

Because Spock is badass.

Crush 2.0

Mon, 07 Dec 2009 21:54:00 -0500

Crush 2.0

"i use to hate jay z but now i heard the rest of his songs i use to dislike rap and hip hop music..."

Sat, 07 Nov 2009 11:37:16 -0500

“i use to hate jay z but now i heard the rest of his songs i use to dislike rap and hip hop music but now im actually giving it a chance the reason for my change of heart is that both rap and hip hop and metal bands both have alot of things in common they both get alot of chicks at their concerts including groupies etc etc etc”

- My new favorite quote in the history of the world… taken from the YouTube comments on Jay-Z’s “Big Pimpin.” All credit goes to commenter TrekkieSithLordBorg . And yes, that makes it that much better.

Revisiting The Wrestler

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 11:52:54 -0400

(Chances are good this post is going to be a little spoilery, if you haven’t seen the movie. Consider yourself warned.)

The tragedy of Randy “The Ram” isn’t his fall from grace. It’s not the significant decrease in paychecks he received after transitioning from working major arenas in front of thousands of fans to a few hundred people in a bingo hall in South Philadelphia.

Most people would say the tragedy is that he held on too long, he didn’t know when to hang up the boots and cut his losses. Ultimately, though, I don’t think that’s the case either.

We all know what it feels like to be around with someone who’s overstayed their welcome. It’s that person in your creative writing workshop who has gone on far too long about their decision to end every sentence in a preposition, or the old man who lulls you into lowering your defenses with talk of football before busting out an hour-long sermon in the only diner in town that still lets you smoke.

If you’re paying attention to “The Wrestler,” that’s not what’s happening at all. It’s not that people aren’t interested in “The Ram,” it’s only that there are fewer of them. Sure, he’s not the superstar he once was, but he’s still able to perform in front of an audience who treats him like he is as big as he was a decade (or more) before that.

And I’m okay with that. I don’t see the problem in someone burning themselves out doing something they love, as long as they’re realistic in their expectations. “The Wrestler” ends before the probable point in Randy’s career where the crowds aren’t dwindling, where they’ve all together stopped showing up.

I’m not sure how he’d handle it. I’m sure it would hurt, but I think there’s a point where you take your boots, go home and deal with that pain privately. Maybe he’d be able to step away, maybe he wouldn’t. But as long as there were people asking him to do what he loved to do, I don’t think you can fault him for doing it.

If they would stop asking and he would go home… I don’t think you can fault him for sitting by the phone and hoping they want to see him wrestle again.

The tragedy comes when you don’t realize how silly it is to throw yourself through a table trying to earn the cheers of an empty arena.

Things in My Pockets (9/1/2009 1:10 pm)

Tue, 01 Sep 2009 13:13:20 -0400

Keys to one Cassady Cooper
Vera Bradley wallet, showing rapid signs of aging
Presentation notes, written in the style of a band’s setlist
Moleskin, containing a monologue for an otherwise unwritten film.
Panera receipt for a small coffee and a bacon and spinach souffle.
Approx. three dollars in quarters.
Exactly two dollars in one dollar bills.

Get your jam on... Alex Jonathan style

Mon, 31 Aug 2009 13:34:32 -0400

Making the Clackity Noise - Lipstick.

Mon, 24 Aug 2009 23:14:00 -0400

merlin:

Maybe just try it. You don’t even have to show anyone. Make the clackity noise until a little story falls out. Just a little bit and just for a little while. Just until you notice one tiny, dumb, pointless story that the keyboard wanted you to remember.

When historians look back on this period of existence (and I mean the fun historians, the ones who look at food and love and what kind of pets people had, not the war kind) I’m convinced they’re going to wind up focusing on the lack of red lipstick.

Sure, it still exists, tucked in the pages of fashion magazines or strutting down a catwalk during Fashion Week, but on the streets of Middletown it’s been replaced by an army of other sticks, glosses and shimmers and balms, available in every color and tint under the sun.

Abby was the only girl I’ve dated who I ever saw wear red lipstick and I’m convinced I only dated her because of it. She wound up being pretty awesome for a lot of other reasons, but when it’s intermission at a hardcore show in a Midwestern church, you need something to make you stand out.

Red lipstick works for that. Forget about low-rise jeans, forget about super-high heels.

Red lipstick is pure sex.

Overly Dramatic Manifesto 2009

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 13:41:05 -0400

1. Ultimately, we are creative beings. Failure to create will leave us dead.
2. Through some diabolical means, society has allowed us to buy into the notion that choosing not to create is an option. It is not. A shark does not choose to stop swimming. The only thing that can pull it from that task is death itself. We must create with the same tenacity, as the stakes are just as high.
3. The idea that creativity is something one has to be inspired to, that it can only come about as the result of some unforeseen muse floating down from the heavens, is almost as dangerous as the idea that not creating is acceptable. Creativity is the exact opposite of that. It’s work. It’s something that has to be worked at.
4. Creativity is the most important thing. We must either find jobs that require us to be creative or find jobs that allow us the time and resources to be creative away from the workplace. Things that do not help push creativity to the fore are at best wastes of time and at worse hurtle us closer to death.
5. Waiting one more second to implement this is waiting one second too long. This starts now.

Bullshit Zero.

Thu, 06 Aug 2009 21:28:51 -0400

Today I started, in earnest, two new projects. The first is by far the least interesting, the Alex Jonathan Brown Resume Carpet Bombing™ (Henceforth AJBRCB™). It’s a terribly complex process of sending my resume to absolutely anyone who might have a job I’m even a little interested in.

Aside: HM+C, I’d really like to work for you. The carpet bombing is why I applied for the job with a Big Rig Dealer.

The second project, the one I’m much more interested, even though it will probably prove much less financially lucrative over the long run, is inspired by Merlin Mann.

Mann developed Inbox Zero, the e-mail management system, and while he’s gone on to do (in my opinion) things that are much more intellectually stimulating, I’m going to blatantly rip-off Inbox Zero right now.

The point of Inbox Zero is developing a way to deal with e-mail the second you see it, knowing what you need to address immediately, what needs to be deleted before it can steal one more second of your time, and what can be put off later until you can deal with it more comfortably. The goal is to stop those little things you keep putting off from sneaking up to overwhelm you later, and get you back to the business of doing whatever the hell it is you do.

Take that philosophy and substitute “petty bullshit” anywhere you see e-mail and you’ve a good idea of what I’m going for here.

I’ve gotten far too wrapped up in everything that doesn’t matter, at the expense of everything that does. I’m working to turn it around.

I’m done scrutinizing the work of others without creating any work of my own. I’m done watching how many people are following me, and I’m done following people out of guilt.

I’m over the bullshit. And it feels good.

Now, after a brief pause, the AJBRCB™ will continue.

A border-line depressed Facebook writes you a message.

Wed, 15 Apr 2009 14:15:09 -0400

Hi. Hey there. How’s it going?

Now, I hate to be this guy, and I know our relationship up to this point has been built upon trust. If someone leaves you an Honesty Box comment, you expect me to get you a notification ASAP. I get that, and I do what I can. It’s trust, dude.

And I know part of trust is that I should assume you’re going to tell me if our relationship is going to change, if you’re having thoughts that our relationship should change, or really, I don’t think it’s out of line for me to expect you to tell me that you had a dream in which our relationship changed.

That’s not out of line, is it?

And I mean, everytime I change (and I realize that perhaps that last change was a little more than you were prepared to deal with, and I apologize for that, and I need you to know that I respect you so much for sticking with me through these minor bouts of schizophrenia), every time I changed I’ve given you a warning before that change happened.

So… we’ve got this trust, right?

I’m going to come clean. I’ve betrayed it.

Last night, you went thirty-six minutes without checking me and… um…. I got a little bored. Started doing a little poking around… umm… maybe checked some caches… and…. wow…. I really don’t know how to say this…. buuuuuuuuuuttttt…….

WHAT THE HELL IS TWITTER?

Maybe I’m nuts, maybe I’m overreacting (please tell me I’m overreacting) but it looks like a lot of the time you’re spending away from me you’re spending with that trollop. And I get it. She’s new. She’s sexy. She’s sleek. Fine.

I need you to understand one thing, though. I have compromised myself in ways I always said I never would in order to keep you happy. I’ve done things, horrible, unspeakable things, that would make my mother blush, in an effort to show you just how much I loved you.

Remember L’il Green Patch? All the joy we shared sending trees to your friends? Yeah, those were the days.

Think of all that fun we’ve had together, tagging drunk pictures of your friends with phallic doodles on their faces, writing notes about seven thousand, six hundred and forty two things none of your friends knew about you, stalking that girl who sat next to you on the airplane that one time, that girl who’s name you got off the top of the Women’s Study paper she was working on as part of her senior year at Wellesley (WELLESLEY?!?!?!?!?!?!?!?!) and was kind enough to leave her profile open to the public just so you could know of her penchant for Rowan Atkinson and strawberry pocky… yeah, let’s see Twitter do that.

What do you see in Twitter, anyway? I just… I don’t get it. It’s a status update.

I’ve got that.

She’ll only do 140 characters. I’ll do whatever you want. Write as long as you’d like. Record a video. Record audio. Post those things on your friends’ walls.

DOES TWITTER HAVE WALLS? HUH? DOES IT?

No. It’s got one page. Two if you count the little “direct messages” thing (Hold on a sec, let me press one for english… oh, yeah, THAT’S A FREAKIN INBOX) and three if you count the little @mentions thing (I’VE GOT THAT TOO! Just go to your applications panel, click Notes, then click “Notes I’m tagged in.” Duh.).

Seriously, you’re telling me you can be satisfied by three pages?

I don’t even know who you are anymore.

Remember when we met, when we locked eyes across the room and I stole you away from that whore Myspace. “She’s too fancy,” you said “She’s too materialistic, too bedazzled. I want something simple again.”

And I was willing to be that for you. But then… it wasn’t enough for you, was it? It’s never enough.

So I changed. Scrabulous, Facebook Chat, Superpoke, I learned to throw sheeps for you, because it’s what you told me you wanted. I was willing to change who I was for you… and this is how you repay me?

You’re returning to someone who is essentially who I used to be, before you ruined me. You’re the one who wanted me to get these… these things.

Fine. Go. Be happy. Enjoy using a social networking site that isn’t populated by twelve year olds, enjoy using a site that isn’t obsessed with reinventing itself. Enjoy using a site that works. I’ll be here when you get tired of that new thing and move back to the old thing.

That’s how this works, right?

I love you,

Facebook.

What's Next?

Tue, 14 Apr 2009 23:06:00 -0400

Part of this whole “graduating thing” (assuming it actually happens, we’re still holding our breath) is taking time to figure out what comes next. For a lot of people I know, this has looked like a couple things. “Applying for jobs” and “applying for doctoral programs” have been some popular options.

I, on the other hand, have decided to go for a third. “Freaking the fuck out.”

Now, you may not think this is the most practical choice, and I would be inclined to agree with that. Any option is better than finding yourself paralyzed to the point of inaction, regardless of the cause of paralysis. In this case, my paralysis is caused by, among other things, the utter lack of any idea of what I really want to do.

I get that this dilemma, trying to decide what I want to do, is most-decidedly a “first world” problem. Sitting in a Panera, pondering where I think my talents will be best utilized (or maybe more accurately, how I would best like to use them) is a conversation I’m privileged to be able to have. And, unless my calendar’s wrong… it’s a privilege I have for about three more weeks.

Then, for the first time since pre-school, I am going to have to get down to the business of being something other than a student. Everything I’ve done in that time has been set up around a school’s schedule, been performed under a school’s rules, and done with the intent of reaping whatever rewards an academic institution could sow.

The game, ladies and gentlemen, is about to change.

The people around me, my co-workers and fellow students, are all making this transition with varying degrees of success, but they all seem to be doing it… differently than I am. People are applying places, interviewing places, getting jobs places, while I’ve been… umm… tweeting? I guess?

And here’s why this hasn’t been working for me, as verbalized in the Muncie Panera.

“You know how people say they’re not really a ‘phone’ person? I might not be a “job” person.”

That is, of course, a ridiculous notion, and one that I can’t afford to have be true. I’m going to become a job person, quickly, but the question of what I’m particularly suited to do is one that I don’t think I can answer.

Let’s run down my skill set.

1. Presentation Aides - I’m incredibly impressive when it comes to designing Powerpoints, as long as the people judging the powerpoints aren’t aware of the work that’s being done by people like Garr Reynolds or the staff at Duarte Designs.

2. Snarkiness - I wouldn’t say I’m the funniest person I know, but occassionally, when I’m firing on all cylinders, I will come up with the greatest Randy Pausch-related voice mail you’ve ever heard in your life.

3. Being Alex Jonathan - This is the hardest of my skills to explain. I am just incredibly good at doing what I do. The problem is labeling and quantifying that. The “Alex Jonathan” experience is not for everyone (clearly…), and in the past I’ve done an incredibly effective job of ensuring that the people who were very interested in being a part of my story had a really hard time sticking around without getting run over (sorry, fork). But at the core, somewhere firewalled behind all the things I’ve created to keep people out and to keep myself from being hurt or feeling like a failure or winding up alone or winding up with someone, there is something quite awesome.

There’s been countless people over the years (Twitter Name Drop! @liznull @mrsdalloway @ashleymcfalls among many others) who’ve worked like mad to get me to buy into my own hype, to realize that is something in there worth fighting for, or to keep this mildly on topic, worth hiring.

So, dear world, while I may not be a “job” person, I do realize that the one thing I do really well is be Alex Jonathan. I’m ridiculously indebted to the people name-dropped above and dozens of others, for showing me exactly what that could look like. The last bit of the puzzle might be realizing that just because I’m getting paid for it, (and maybe doing it while selling paper or sump pumps or slinging coffee) it’s still important, and always going to be what I do best.

And that “Alex Jonathan experience” is officially on the market.

"Ideas are everything. I don’t mean that in the “everything is a product of ideas”..."

Sat, 31 Jan 2009 03:18:00 -0500

“

Ideas are everything. I don’t mean that in the “everything is a product of ideas” sense, I mean it in the sense that the process of creating ideas is inherently human, and I think it is an entirely responsible decision to turn your back on those who make a conscious effort to shut down that little ember we’re all born with, that thing in your chest that pulls you toward creating something, anything, to be expressive through song or dance or math or words or science, to say that this world’s not enough, not complete, until you’ve added your thing, whatever that is to it.

Even if people don’t know what that thing is, I’ve got no place for the people who don’t get that not creating, not thinking is the equivalent of death, that retreating into the safe chrysalis of routine and willingly accepting “sameness” is throwing water onto the spark that not only makes you human, but makes you an interesting human, the type of person that draws others in and can turn something that has no right to be anything other than mundane into the type of life-altering experience that results in, if not the great American novel, at least the types of stories that get exchanged the next day without the use of words, because it was awesome enough all anyone needs is a glance.

So. Yeah. Ideas are good.

”

- Correspondence of the day… 1/30/2009. More dramatic than necessary.

AlexJonathan.com

ourhandsaretied: Welcome to America, motherfucker.

nevver: “Right again, Robin!” Duo (ver. 1.0)

merlin: ilovecharts: youmightfindyourself: mike...

"Trust me, Davis could care less about being mocked. It wasn’t respect that he worked hard for."

"It’s always better to leave the party early. If I had rolled along with the strip’s..."

Production Night.

(via ourhandsaretied)

You wind up bored at work and remember you’re not as good at Scrabble as you think you are,...

Just to make sure JD sees...

Crush 2.0

"i use to hate jay z but now i heard the rest of his songs i use to dislike rap and hip hop music﻿..."

Revisiting The Wrestler

Things in My Pockets (9/1/2009 1:10 pm)

Get your jam on... Alex Jonathan style

Making the Clackity Noise - Lipstick.

Overly Dramatic Manifesto 2009

Bullshit Zero.

A border-line depressed Facebook writes you a message.

What's Next?

"Ideas are everything. I don’t mean that in the “everything is a product of ideas”..."

"i use to hate jay z but now i heard the rest of his songs i use to dislike rap and hip hop music..."