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(04/24/19 3:44am)
Twenty years ago, I graduated from the University of Southern California. Things were seen, jobs were done. I moved through London, New York, June Lake, California, Auckland and Los Angeles again, doing mostly live audio engineering with a two-season stint as a ski instructor thrown in for fun.
(04/14/19 11:36pm)
“You thought. Do me a f*cking favor. Shut up, listen and learn….You don’t really know how things work around here, so I will tell you. You. Have. No. Brain. No judgment calls are necessary. What you think means nothing. What you feel means nothing. You are here for me. You are here to protect my interests, and to serve my needs. So while it may look like a little thing to you, when I ask for a packet of Sweet ‘N’ Low, that’s what I want. And it is your responsibility now to see that I get what I want. Am I clear?” - "Swimming with Sharks," 1994
(04/09/19 12:18am)
I give you fair warning: This is largely a lecture. One given often, but always desperately needed.
(04/09/19 12:10am)
On an average Chapel Hill drive, from Eubanks on through Elliott and on Franklin and Rosemary, Chapel Hill is awash in luxury condos and apartments. Yet the lights rarely seem to be on. Housing economics are, even at their simplest, complicated. The core problems are those classics of abstract economics: supply, demand and incentives; yet certain governments try to massage these with regulation.
(03/20/19 3:28am)
Before I was a Tar Heel, I was a member of the University of Southern California “Trojan Family.” This family is far from perfect, and its abuse at the hands of some of its members seems on the rise.
(02/20/19 12:25am)
I recently came home to my partner watching an oldie but a goodie: 1996’s The Birdcage. This American film was itself based on a 1978 French film (La Cage aux Folles), itself based on a same-named French stage play. We both fondly recalled seeing it on its mid-nineties release, and I took some time to have a good laugh with my partner. It had been at least 20 years since I had seen this film.
(02/14/19 2:42am)
We met in spite of each other
(02/04/19 1:51am)
“Haven't you heard of the Sexual Revolution?”
(01/16/19 3:08am)
The New York Times story compiling accusations of Harvey Weinstein’s pattern of sexual predation and the #MeToo movement that has followed in its wake activates a very old adage— better late than never. What needs now to be understood moving forward is the long history and practice of the open secret.
(11/29/18 2:55am)
Larry Fedora's firing will be the latest in a long narrative arc of humiliation for UNC's beleaguered football program. While I have issues with Fedora's linkage of football to American greatness, I do not have much of a personal issue with the coach. He simply lost too many games for UNC to be taken seriously as a national football program. Not all programs can be the women's soccer program, or the men's basketball program.
(11/27/18 1:59am)
Mass shootings, 20 years after Columbine are now banal and common. They should not be.
(10/31/18 9:51pm)
I remember being attracted to the horror genre because it was explicitly forbidden. In the videocassette rental store a 5-minute walk from my house (yep, I am that old) there was something I have not seen before or since, far in a back corner: the Castle of Horror, a plaster fortress enclosing the videotapes of the damned. I spent hours, fascinated, browsing the covers all over that store yet the Castle of Horror always called like a siren to those who would enter, even though one knew they may break themselves on the rocky shores of cinematic waste that lay within.
(10/03/18 2:18am)
Art prior to your present historical moment can be quickly judged, but the better move is to first critically witness it. I would like to tell you the following narrative arc is not immortalized in celluloid. I really would. But that would not be the truth.
(09/18/18 11:31pm)
Around two weeks ago, I ended my summer as I always do with a drive from Chautauqua, N.Y. to my family's home in Hillsborough, N.C. The route I choose has the least amount of interstate highway I can get away with, and it's one I choose purposely to drive through towns and see homes and businesses throughout this segment of America. The 543 mile route courses through several small towns in western Pennsylvania, through narrow strips of Maryland and West Virginia, travels through the Shenandoah Valley in Virginia, before climbing over the mountains of Afton, V.A. to then follow U.S. 29 through Lynchburg and Danville before the home stretch of N.C. 86 leading to Hillsborough.
(09/12/18 5:30pm)
Alright North Carolina, you are being called. Called to a higher purpose. Called to show how America is great! Called to the highest duty you can aspire to as an American without a war to contribute to. What is this call you ask? Why, to enter into panic about a possible natural disaster of course!
(09/10/18 10:49pm)
Last week, my boss and I continued a tradition of celebrating the end of a hard summer of non-stop work with a trip to Cedar Point amusement park in Sandusky, Ohio. Just before the morning gates opened, a recorded announcement interrupted the standard musical wallpaper, asking us to stand and sing the Star-Spangled Banner. Much of the crowd seemed a bit confused, as I was, because there was no displayed flag in sight. I questioned the wisdom of the amusement park management: What of domestic patrons and tourists from other countries who find American patriotism unsettling? Then I remembered we were firmly in Republican territory. Not only Ohio but every state bordering it, the immediate customer market for this park, went for Trump in 2016. Without being totally cynical about the motives of Cedar Point management, I reflected that perhaps here patriotism and marketing conveniently coincided.
(04/25/18 12:10am)
Early in my first semester of grad school, a colleague invited me out for coffee to kindly inquire about how I was doing so far. I was doing okay, I thought, but was feeling a bit out of place. My colleague gently suggested that I was being perhaps a bit too aggressive in asserting myself in class and in general.
(04/28/17 6:20am)
This tale is about pride and humility. It begins with me being an uncomprehending jackass and ends with me being an insensitive one. This won’t be a first or last. A scratch-off came to me in the mail one day near the end of last year: that awful, awful year. This scratch-off promised me a free television if I would just go down to a used car dealership. You can guess whether I received a prize.
(04/06/17 4:44am)
THE ISSUE: North Carolina is considering raising the legal smoking age to 21 — treating tobacco the same as alcohol. If passed, purchasing by or selling tobacco products to minors would be a class 2 misdemeanor. People disagree as to whether this is an effective public health measure or a restriction on freedom. You can read the other point of view here.
(10/18/16 2:15am)
If God has any reserve of mercy, this election will be the last great grand showdown between two Baby Boomer presidential candidates. One, a miserable lying egotist. The other, a miserable lying egotist. It fits that "Batman v Superman: Dawn of Justice" came out this year, particularly because the great grand showdown in that film, just as in our reality, just stinks. It stinks watching millions of dollars go to the spectacle of a people’s home demolished by two overgrown children given powers beyond their deserving. Popular culture and the narratives it shepherds through the ages wield power. Following that, one wonders if art precedes life in this case.