Fuel for thought
May 12, 2008 | 7:41 am
I’m driving to Albany today. I didn’t really need to read that the average price of gas is now $3.70 per gallon, up from $1.50 a gallon in 2001.
Discuss.
Travel, Politics | Leave a comment (1)
Return to the life of an ink-stained wretch
May 8, 2008 | 6:04 am
I am now freelancing for the Boston Globe’s business desk on what looks like it will be a somewhat regular basis. My first article is here. Freelancing for a newspaper in Boston, I’m finding, is much more pleasant than being a staff writer for a paper in Pittsburgh.
As for the rest of my writing life, I’ve been busy with end of semester stuff (I finished classes Monday and submitted grades on Tuesday), planning a research trip to Albany and taking a second look at Gary Zerola. Hence, limited blogging, but that should change once I get into my summer routine.
Writing, Life, Newspapers | Leave a comment (1)
I felt a lot better than I looked
May 1, 2008 | 10:58 am
This is embarrassing, but in the interest of full disclosure, I’m posting the Runner’s World video on me. I look like Barney the Dinosaur and he really fixated on me watching the 2006 Boston Marathon after leaving a bar, so I come off as a bit of a drunk.
For those of you in my world, look for RCF’s cameo at the very end of the finish line interview.
Boston, Video, Running, TNT | Leave a comment (1)
A summer reading list, of sorts
April 27, 2008 | 10:46 pm
It looks like I’ll be teaching two sections of the Journalistic Essay at Bridgewater State next fall (which is very exciting for me). I’m totally revamping my syllabus and putting together a new reading list.
If you’re interested in seeing what I’ll be teaching (it’s a work in progress) you can take a look here. And please use the comments to let me know if you have any recommendations; I’m typically looking for feature-length nonfiction articles of 3,000-10,000 words written in a narrative style.
(And yes, I realize I wrote one of the articles on the list — I typically teach something I wrote so I can tell the students how each bit of information was reported, and let them know what I would have done differently).
As a reminder, you can see some of the work my students did last Fall at this site. I plan to make more use of that site next year, so add it to your RSS feed if you’re interested.
Writing, Journalism, Teaching | Leave a comment (2 comments)
It’s funny because it’s true
April 25, 2008 | 10:33 am
This is an animated case study that supports my belief that texting will be the death of society.
Video, Dating | Leave a comment (0)
Marathon Photos
April 23, 2008 | 9:39 am
Courtesy of Brad. I haven’t really organized or even looked at them yet, and yes, I realize I look like an open-mouthed dork in half of them.
Running, TNT, Photos | Leave a comment (3 comments)
Why I read Randazza
April 22, 2008 | 9:49 pm
Becomes he comes up with sensible solutions to real life problems. Take, for example, his urinal code:
1. If there are three or more urinals, and all of them are empty, thou shalt take a urinal on the end. That way, the next guy can take the other end — leaving an unoccupied urinal between the men.
2. Thou shalt never take a urinal adjacent to a urinal that is in use unless there are no other urinals available.
3. If there are other men in the rest room, thou shalt look forward, down, or up whilst urinating — never to the side.
Funny, Interesting/Quirky | Leave a comment (0)
Yup. I did it.
April 22, 2008 | 6:49 am
There was a time when I questioned whether or not running a second marathon could be more fun, more uplifting, more meaningful and more a bunch of other stuff.
I was able to answer that with a “yes” yesterday.
I’ll spare you the full report but there was something overwhelming about running on a course and seeing people you know, both in the race and on the sidelines, which just didn’t happen as much overseas. I’m happy that I was able to knock close to 40 minutes off of my time in Dublin in 2006. And the crowds — who line the course almost all the way from Hopkinton to Boston — providing me with memories I hope I never lose.
Like this sign, seen somewhere between mile 22 and 24: “Run like a pre-teen on a polygamist ranch in Texas.”
I’m still a little speechless about the whole experience and my thoughts are still a little disjointed. RCF will be sending photos and a video of me finishing later on today. Maybe I’ll have something more coherent to say then, but right now I’m just going to go bask in the delirum (and ake some Advil).
Running, TNT | Leave a comment (0)
Training by the numbers
April 20, 2008 | 9:42 pm
Number of miles run between November 19 and today: 386 (AKA not nearly enough)
Minutes spent on elliptical machine: 875
Number of shoes used in training: 8
Size of shoes used in training: 15-4E
Weight lost during training: 20 pounds
Total weight lost since starting to run two years ago: 40 pounds
Time I’ll wake up tomorrow: 4 a.m.
Number of bottles of water consumed today: 12
Score of Red Sox game I went to in an effort to make today go faster: 6-5 Sox
My race number: 21782 (follow me at www.baa.org)
Time I’m shooting for: 5:30
Time I’ll make if everything goes righ tomorrow: 5:19
Time in Dublin, 2006: 6:00:24
Money raised for the Leukemia-Lymphoma Society: $3,845 (and counting — please help!)
Running, TNT | Leave a comment (1)
A book that will make you want to claw your eyes out
April 15, 2008 | 12:37 pm
Nothing is right in my world today.
They say something as simple as a book can change your life, but they didn’t warn you that sometimes that change is for the worse. And the book that changed my life isn’t even a good book — it’s poorly written, excessively narcissistic and riddled with typos. It amounts to nothing more than cutting-and-pasting entries from your self-obsessed blog into MS Word, then handing it into you publisher.
And then watching it shoot up the New York Times Bestseller’s list.
It’s hard to even put I Hope They Serve Beer In Hell
The book itself is pretty much a diary of Max’s drunken sexual exploits. The Cliff Notes might look something like this:
1. Guy walks into a bar.
2. Guy gets excessively drunk.
3. Guy says all sorts of insulting things to all sorts of people, including women he wants to sleep with.
4. Women, in turn, say he’s funny and sleep with him.
5. Guy wakes up in a puddle of his own bodily functions.
6. Guy goes home to write about it in telling detail.
A sample: “I was solidly Tucker Max Drunk after a long Friday night bar-hopping, and came home alone at around 2am. I hadn’t fucked for like four days — a serious dry spell for me — so I started scrolling through my phone, calling every female name I come across…I don’t really recall the amount of time I spent on the phone or even how many girls I called, but I do remember having the distinct impression that I was shit out of luck. I relegated myself to the couch to pass out while watching re-runs of The Shield, when all of the sudden there was a knock on the door. It was an irregular fuck buddy of mine, Sandra. Sweet!”
At the risk of giving away the anecdote, another girl also shows up. Hilarity ensues. And that was one of the less self-aggrandizing passages of the book.
You can call this book disturbing because Max insists all of the stories are true. You can call it disturbing because people like Max — and the people who have sex with him — do indeed exist. You can call this book disturbing because for many of the kids in my freshman writing class, it’s the only book they’ve ever read outside of school. And the loved it. You can call this book disturbing because what amounts to 277 pages of monosyllabic tit jokes now classifies as literature
But here’s what’s really disturbing about the book: I couldn’t put that fucker down. The woman who recommended it to me (she had bought it based on the title and because the woman posing with max on the cover looked like her roommate) had the same reaction. She gave me fair warning, telling me it was disturbing and would probably throw me into a long fit of sleepless nights.
And she was right.
If I am going to give Tucker Max a compliment it is A) going to be backhanded and B) note that, if nothing else, he is excessively honest — as all good writers should be. You get the sense he is too dumb and too preoccupied with himself to make this stuff up, and even he notes that if there had been exaggerations, he probably would have been sued for libel by now. He’s also quick to note his shortcomings, no matter how embarrassing they may be. He constantly refers to his average-sized penis (guys who make constant references to being average tend to be using the metric system to measure). He writes about defecating himself in the lobby of an Embassy Suites Hotel and of being duped into getting a rather awful chlamydia test by a jilted lover (in, I might at, far too excruciating detail).
In any case, I hope they revoke my library card in hell.
Books | Leave a comment (2 comments)
Time lapse map of Iraq fatalaties
April 14, 2008 | 9:48 am
Turn the volume up on this one and watch it through until the end. I think this more than anything else I have read or seen over the past five years brought the point home.
Politics | Leave a comment (0)
Don’t complain about your weekend
April 14, 2008 | 4:53 am
Because in 1999 some guy went into an elevator on a Friday night and didn;t get out for 41 hours. The condensed security video tells the story, but the New Yorker also has an article.
Interesting/Quirky | Leave a comment (0)
MySpace Morons
April 10, 2008 | 5:46 am
“I iz guna b votN repUblikaN dis elektion cUz obaMa b uh fraUd. dat dur neRd b uH wanNba OG GanGsTa, he nahT no waT eet B lyke awn da streeTz lYke mi n mI BOiz duz. He b Uh ImposTa n b Uh disGraCe 2 uz blaK peePz evreewhur”
Yeah dude. See more MySpace morons flashing $20s and $10s and the occassional firearm, all claiming to make $250,000 per year with barely a high school education.
I haven’t had this much fun since I discovered Midget Mac.
Internet, Funny | Leave a comment (2 comments)
Not so dumb but still kind of happy
April 9, 2008 | 10:23 am
Every day from 4:30 a.m. until 9 I write financial news. Since I started this job almost a year ago it has gotten increasingly dire: the subprime mortgage market meltdown snowballed into the credit crunch which exploded into what most now agree is a recession. Job losses, reduced consumer spending and widespread home foreclosures are all underway.
Then I take the dog for a walk and listen to my iPod. Music generally lifts my spirits but if you listen to the lyrics too hard, you realize they’re overwhelmingly fixated on broken hearts and lost love. And when they’re not, they’re fixated on political ills. With the shame of borrowing a concept from a film/book as bad as “High Fidelity,” it’s amazing any of us made it through adolescence without going to therapy, given everything we listened to.
I teach in the middle of most days, and my students are generally upbeat and fun (today we’re taking a field trip to the Boston Globe). But some of them have significant problems and it’s hard not to care.
Then I come home and continue researching which evil criminal I will spend the next year or two researching for my next book. The two leading candidates are awful people who did some incredibly awful things. I mean really awful things involving chain saws and bombs.
All I’m saying is sometimes I feel guilty for being happy.
Work In Progress
April 8, 2008 | 10:06 pm
Note: At times I’m apt to use this space to think with my fingers, so to speak — type out some ideas for an article I may or may not write and see if it makes more sense on the page than in my head, and to see what kind of reaction I get in the comments. This is one of those times.
When my friend Stefanie stopped drinking three years ago one of the first things she did was change her voice mail greeting.
“Hi, it’s Stefanie. I’m making some changes. Leave a message after the beep and if you don’t hear back from me, you’re one of the changes.”
It sounds kind of appealing — cleansing it all away (minus the detox, rehab and pain of alcohol withdrawal — I didn’t know her when she was a drunk but I’m still pretty proud and inspired by how well she has pulled her life together). It would be nice to just dump the toxic people from your life and move on without looking back.
The saying is clean cuts heal faster, but I’ve noticed clean cuts get a little messy in the cyber age. Never mind that we’re always connected, always a drink and a text message away from rekindling drama, or that even if someone is no longer on your favorite persons list, you know when they’re online because you didn;t have the heart to block them from your IM list. If you have a blog, a Facebook account, a semi-regular byline, or all of the above, it makes it easy for people to keep tabs on you. We do this because for some reason, dragging things out in the name of “closure” is more appealing than just walking away. We do this because we can.
Perhaps you’ve seen a message similar to this one in your Facebook account:
thank you for unfriending me. that’s really classy. 24 hours…and now you have erased me from your life. go you!
I mean, think about it — the social networking generation has actually created a new verb: unfriending. And why is it so tragic to be unfriended even when the relationship is clearly over? Because Facebook and other social networks let you limit the unfriended from seeing your profile. That means they can’t see what you’re doing, who you’re talking with or what photos of yourself you have posted.
Blogs may be the worst, and it shows that this problem can extend beyond romantic relationships. It’s been more than three years since I lived in Pittsburgh, yet someone from there, according to I.P. addresses, routinely spends three hours at a clip trying to leave disparaging comments about me on this site (so much so that all comments are now moderated — yet he or she still tries from time to time). I suppose I have my suspicions about who has too much free time and too much Yuengling on a Saturday night, but the reality is I have no idea who is doing it. You tend to make your fair share of enemies when you work for the vast right wing conspiracy, as I did in Pittsburgh, so i don;t dare hazard a guess.
Three years is a long, long time to hold a grudge. If the guy (and I really do think it’s a guy based on how crude the comments are) had the balls to leave his name, perhaps we could talk out our differences.
This toxic behavior goes beyond social networking sites and blogs. It’s no secret I’m a big fan of reading Craigslist Missed Connections — it’s highly entertaining and, as I’ve said before, like a mini soap opera in your RSS reader. The original goal of the section was to take a shot with reconnecting with that random stranger you shared a glance with on the subway, or recover the phone number of that person you lost.
But more and more, they’re missed connections with a broken heart. The ads are vengeful (”I’m so much happier without you in my life”), remorseful (”Do you hurt as much as I do?”) and sometimes telling/disturbing (”thanks for the herpes, Scott”). More than anything else, they’re toxic and messy.
I mention this partly because I just read a blog entry by an ex tonight (it was actually quite good and did more to fuel good memories than bitterness; we left things on good terms), and partly because I have a half-baked idea for a writing project. Not a book, but more like one of those think pieces you might see in the Boston Globe Ideas section on Sunday. The Internet’s power to start relationships through online dating services is well documented, but what havoc is it playing on how we end relationships? I’m not as keen on the idea as I once was, but I did take it far enough to start doing some interviews a few weeks ago.
I talked to some so-called relationship experts — some of them quite good with bona fide credentials, others merely crackpots trying to plug some crap self-help books. And basically what I found was this: this kind of behavior is not good.
“I call it silent stalking,” one of them — whose name I don’t recall — told me. “I can’t stress to my clients enough how unhealthy that is…but they don’t listen to me.”
I also mention all of this because, well, I’m not exactly innocent when it comes to holding on for too long because it’s so damn easy with all of these cyber ties. So I’m gonna practice what I preach. I’m blocking people on IM, “unfriending” people on Facebook and cleaning out my email and cell phone address books to make sure I don’t “accidentally” reach out to someone who is best left in the past.
In other words, I’m making some changes, and if you don’t hear from me, you’re one of the changes.
Writing, Life, Dating | Leave a comment (2 comments)