AlexJonathan.com

Oh, hai, Tumblr. I've pretty much left you for...

Sat, 17 Jul 2010 17:22:14 -0400

Oh, hai, Tumblr. I've pretty much left you for...

Introductory Pamphlet For My Artist Colony (Opening in 2013).

Mon, 10 May 2010 17:40:00 -0400

First things first, you are awesome. We know that. You know that. We do not have time to remind you of that fact. If you don’t know it, learn it. Or get the fuck out.

The Rules

Vehicles exist for two reasons. Taking people places is the second most important. The most important function is “mobile concert venue.” When in a car, truck or bus (especially bus), you are expected to behave accordingly. You are a rockstar. Rockstars aren’t worried if they don’t know every word, or what the person in the car next to them thinks. Keep your eyes on the road and your mind on the rock.
Voting is cool. Jury duty is cool. Not voting to avoid jury duty makes you a punkass.
Remove the words “guilty pleasure” from your vocabulary. This is a crutch you use to hide your true feelings for something society has decided is less awesome than you know it is. Screw that. Go burn yourself a copy of “Party in the USA” and invoke rule one all over society’s face.
Don’t be a dick.
The order of the rules is random. Rule four is the most important rule.
Sports are pretty great. You don’t have to like all sports, you don’t have to have a favorite sport, but if you don’t see the soul-cleansing appeal of thirty-thousand people in one room, losing their minds over something as inconsequential as a puck sliding into a net, forgetting for a second about their mortgage or their grade or a war in some far-off country, we have no use for you.
If you say that you hate all rap or country, you’re listening to the wrong rap and country. Or you’re really saying you don’t like people from the South or black people. Neither stance is acceptable.
Typography Matters.
Games are fun. If you haven’t played a game before, that’s a reason TO play, not an excuse not to.
You may go easy on new players (or players you find cute). You may not let them win.
Occasionally, make a decision, chief.
We respect our vegetarian, vegan and gluten-free brothers and sisters. While they have veto power over restaurant choices, their dietary decisions are not an excuse to force them to choose the dining establishment. See rule 11.
Smoking, drinking and gambling are cool (if that’s your thing) in moderation. Don’t get out of control.
Be creative. Take photos, write poems, fold paper, noodle around on a guitar. Do something.
Share your creativity. Post photos to Flickr, start a blog, open an Etsy shop, record a demo. Let people know about it, and be open to their constructive criticism.
Generally, pizza is awesome.
Do not underestimate the pretzel.
Some people suck. Lock your doors, guard your credit cards… but Barry Manilow got it wrong in Copacabana. Fall in love.

Seriously, this just happened.

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 13:29:00 -0400

My phone: I traded eyeliner for dark circles, salon hair cuts for pontails and braids, long showers for hairy legs, late nights for early morning, designer purses for diaper bags and I wouldn't change a thing! With Mother's day drawing near, lets see how many Mom's will forward this. Mom's don't care what we gave up and will continue to give up for our kids(: *~*~ashley~*~

Me: Wrong number, chief.

My phone: Oh sorry who is this *~*~ashley~*~

Me: It's Alex.

My phone: Ok where is cassandra *~*~ashley~*~

Me: I have no idea. Apparently she either got a new phone or got raptured. You know, the usual.

My phone: Ok sorry to bother you *~*~ashley~*~

Me: No worries. Good talk, Ashley! Stay in school! Hugs not drugs!

My phone: I dont do either. I am out of school *~*~ashley~*~

Me: Oh, sorry! Umm... keep up the good work! (is that more appropriate?)

My phone: yes *~*~ashley~*~

Me: Then keep on rocking in the free world!

I love my iPhone and MacBook. I hate that Apple doesn’t...

Wed, 28 Apr 2010 10:43:55 -0400

I love my iPhone and MacBook. I hate that Apple doesn’t feel anything like this anymore.

It Takes a Village to Make Me Functional: Pretty Much Everyone I Know.

Sat, 03 Apr 2010 12:56:54 -0400

On Monday, I start my new job. A few days ago, a friend messaged me to ask what, exactly, this new job is. I haven’t been able to figure out how to explain it. So, I’ll warn you, this will be rambly.

On Friday, I worked for an insurance subrogation company, moving data from client systems into the subro company’s database. It’s extraordinarily slow work, the type of thing that should really be done by computers at this point, but no one wants to sit down and figure out exactly how that would work.

When this upcoming week starts, I’ll be working in the same place, but as a Communication Specialist (working title). What that looks like, no one’s really sure, but the idea is that I’ll help with a bunch of the branding and creative issues as the company re-thinks who it is and how it presents itself. Which is only the most exciting thing in the world.

That’s half my job. The other half is working for a Sales Consultancy in Fishers, essentially as the catch-all creative. Projects that have been mentioned (or that I’ve already started on) include designing the next book release from the group, and expanding their video and podcasting efforts.

It’s pretty much a perfect set-up, especially for someone with my attention span, and the fact that it’s actually happening has almost nothing to do with me. My plan for this week was to write a series of blogs. Only two wound up getting out of my head before I reailzed I didn’t know how to say what I was trying to say.

I’ve been lucky enough to be surrounded by some incredibly awesome people, but the problem with recognizing the effects they’ve had on you is that so often those changes are subtle enough you don’t realizing it’s happening. It’s hard to have those big notable epiphanies when the changes are inch-by-inch.

So, a big thanks goes out to everyone who’s listened to me prattle on about pro wrestling or a new video game or becoming a “knowledge worker” or the script I was starting or the podcast I was starting or the board game I was developing. Very few of you ever told me to shut the hell up, and enabling my addiction to ideas let me get to a place where I can actually do something with them.

Yes, Merlin Mann singlehandedly destroyed by world in the best way with a single blog post (It was the initial impetus for these ‘thank-you blogs,’ and I’ll write a proper one soon) but I just wanted to get this out before Monday.

So… it shipped.

Thanks again.

It Takes a Village to Make Me Functional: Wiggly Wiggly

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 21:46:19 -0400

I’m starting a pretty insanely awesome new job on Monday, as well as making some changes to the way I write/create online. This week, I’m taking some time to give shout-outs to a few of the people/things that helped me get to a point where this opportunity turned into a reality. This is part two.

A few years ago, for a reason I totally forgot, I went to Bob Saget’s Wikipedia entry. Once there, I learned perhaps the greatest piece of trivia ever: Bob Saget was the commissioner for an independent wrestling organization.

Any mention of that fact has been deleted from Wikipedia, but it was up long enough to introduce me to CHIKARA. This all happened at a point when I hadn’t paid any attention to wresting for a while, and CHIKARA’s combination of great in-ring action and awesome storytelling (wrestling ice cream, people) drew me back into the fold.

CHIKARA lacks a TV deal, so the easiest way to get involved in the action is through the Podcast-a-Go-Go, a ten minute weekly show featuring bits of recent matches. I can’t tell you how good it is, and how refreshing it was to find some kind of wrestling that amused me again.

This post isn’t about CHIKARA, though. At the end of the Go-Go, the hosts would rattle off a list of different Websites and projects, including Smart Wrestling Fan and A Wiggly World.

It turns out one of the driving forces behind the production (and occasional host) of the Go-Go, a man delightfully named Wiggly Wiggly, was up to a lot of other stuff. When I first started getting into CHIKARA, Wiggly was attempting to make a living podcasting.

I should clarify. He was attempting to eek out a living giving away podcasts about professional wrestling, video games and (essentially) atheism, and doing it without the benefit of any prior celebrity. He was trying to get by on the donations from the audience that digs that stuff, which I know from experience is often unemployed young students. Not exactly a cash cow.

You could tell by listening to any of the work it wasn’t easy. It sounded terribly difficult at parts, and yet the work kept coming out, week after week, even when it seemed he wasn’t sure it would make it out.

Things have changed since I started listening. He’s left the pro wrestling podcast (which immediately went drastically downhill, though he still handles multiple duties on the CPAGG), drastically re-vamped the videogame podcast (which is 110x better, and you should totally listen to here), got married (after an on-podcast proposal), and got a job.

If you want to take a cynical approach, that last bit might indicate that the professional podcasting experiment failed (and Wiggly’s expressed some of these same sentiments), but I think that’s really myopic. It turns out it’s just insanely hard to make any kind of living podcasting, especially if you haven’t built an audience for yourself somewhere else.

No, he didn’t get bought out by Viacom and offered studio space in L.A. to start a media revolution. But he did find a devoted audience and remains the only truly independent podcaster who creates content with a sound quality high enough it could be coming from NPR. He’s also built a pretty decent community around his projects, and the day We Talk Games pops up in iTunes is pretty much the best day of the month.

All of that exists only because he was willing to put himself on the line. That’s the takeaway for me. He took some big risks, made some big sacrifices, and created more than a few really awesome things in the process.

I’m so envious of that act, of trusting your ability to create to the point of putting a lot on the line to see exactly how far your skills can take you.

Wiggly took those steps in a way that was really public for those of us following along. And by doing that, he held doors open to let us follow him in our own way.

If you’re interested in checking out more of Wiggly’s work (and you totally should), his main portal is at www.wigglysworld.com. I can’t recommend We Talk Games strongly enough. Crazy good stuff.

It Takes A Village to Make Me Functional: Ronald Short

Tue, 30 Mar 2010 18:21:00 -0400

If you’re wired the way I am, being a Radio/TV/Film student at Indiana State University is a unique experience. The department, at least during my time there, was something of a mash-up of a few faculty members who were really motivated and excited to be there, and others who were just treating the whole experience as a job, or were pretty darn misogynistic and homophobic. The first group of people make education incredible. The second group made it fucking intolerable.

Susan Kray killed my desire to succeed in filmmaking. Despite the incredible work of Dr. Tenerelli, Dr. Clarkson, and John Ford (Facebook friend first name basis, what?!) she pretty much ruined the department for me as well. Dr. Kray managed to turn a screenwriting class into a formatting class, stripping out any aspect of creativity and turning it into a “guess what I’m thinking” contest where the final goal was to turn out product as close as possible to something that would star John Travolta and Jennifer Aniston (not in a good way).

If I remember correctly, that experience was pretty much the same for everyone. But we all reacted differently.

If Dr. Kray was the one who murdered my film career, Ronald Short was the one who got me through the funeral.

Ronnie is a ridiculously dedicated filmmaker, who just happens to be an ex-classmate, ex-roommate and ex-dart partner of mine, and we sat through the disaster that was Kray’s class together. And while I was busy throwing in the towel and coming up with ways to justify not caring about the class, Ron kept writing. Maybe more importantly, he kept caring about what he was writing.

The author/blogger Seth Godin has this whole thing about how important it is to “ship.” Whatever you’re doing creatively, writing, filmmaking, blowing glass, the most important part of the process is shipping. I’m notoriously bad at shipping, Ron excels.

Ron’s definitely a person that, had I met him five years earlier or later, I’d be besties with. As it is, I consider him a good friend who’s opinion on pretty much everything creative I trust. The reason he’s on this list, though, is that is was impossible to be around someone with so much passion, so much drive for filmmaking without realizing you’d never be able to compete.

My passion for filmmaking stopped at the point in the process right after the idea is hatched. I love scenarios, I love characters, I love dialogue… and I hate writing ninety minutes of it.

It took seeing what that passion to ship movies actually looks like to realize it wasn’t what I really wanted to be doing.

Thanks, Ron.

If you’re interested in any of Mr. Short’s work (and you totally should be), follow him on Twitter or read his blog.

The Week Ahead.

Fri, 26 Mar 2010 12:00:00 -0400

April 5th starts something new for me.

My boring desk job in Muncie is morphing into a pretty exciting creative job in Muncie and Fishers, my checking account is turning into something a little less anemic, and it seems entirely plausible my RAZR is going to be upgraded to something that is used by people with grown-up jobs. And sitting a week away from this shift, it’s pretty much the most crazy/awesome thing ever.

The weirdest thing about it is how the whole thing has played out. I walked into an entry-level position in a field I knew nothing about, and sixish months later, I’m sliding into a job that seems pretty close to exactly what I would have drawn up for myself leaving grad school.

I feel like I’ve had so little to do with this process. Each step of the personal progression I’ve made over the past few years has been influenced by so many diverse groups of people (both people I know and, well, internet people, mostly) that it’s hard to tell where input has started and where my blatant aping of them ended.

So, with the five work days left before this switch happens, I’m laying it all out there. Monday through Friday, I’ll be putting some words and pictures in this space, trying to pay back just a little of what I’ve taken gratis. It won’t be near enough, and it might come off as a lot of navel-gazing, but I feel like it’s (literally) the least I can do.

And things start new on the 5th.

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.

AlexJonathan.com

Oh, hai, Tumblr. I've pretty much left you for...

Introductory Pamphlet For My Artist Colony (Opening in 2013).

Seriously, this just happened.

I love my iPhone and MacBook. I hate that Apple doesn’t...

It Takes a Village to Make Me Functional: Pretty Much Everyone I Know.

It Takes a Village to Make Me Functional: Wiggly Wiggly

It Takes A Village to Make Me Functional: Ronald Short

The Week Ahead.

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

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